6 July, 2024
More powerful than the wind
The year has just started, two lovers catch up in Belgium. They have only recently met each other, but they already know that they are made to be together. Belgium and Euskadi, Lotto Dstny and Orbea: a group of people in love with cycling, with many bikes at its core.
It’s cold—very cold—but the riders are eager to test the bikes they will be riding this year. The Orca Aero is the first to appear on the scene as eyes widen as big as saucers.
By the end of the morning, the first crush is already evident. What racer wouldn’t fall for such feelings? To experience the enormous power that your legs transfer and transform into pure speed. The faster the bike goes, the easier it seems.
Aerodynamic resistance has been reduced by 15 W at 40 km/h and 28 W at 50 km/h. It's not just a feeling—it's absolutely real.
Countless tests are executed in the velodrome and while riding uphill at low speeds. The necessary watts to travel a distance at a specific speed are measured, calculating how many of those watts are needed to overcome resistance from gravity, air, friction… Et voilà! Thousands and thousands of work hours later, these watts are reduced to a minimum.
So many hours of research and testing just to cut through the wind effortlessly.
And in this way, like a supreme being, ubiquitous by pure necessity, Lotto Dstny has been entrusted with blind confidence to the Orca Aero. Thus, omnipresent in the first part of the season, the almighty Aero becomes the hero on medium-mountain days, flat stages and in the vast majority of Classics, in its multiple modalities and terrain.
Now they come together at the Tour de France. The first week of each grand tour focuses on the fastest in the peloton, those whose watts must be used no matter what; those who stage heart-stopping final sprints and are capable of maintaining impossible speeds for a long period of time. Those born for Orca Aero.
At the head is a Belgian—Belgian with capital letters. A man in black, yellow and red who proudly wears the champion colors atop his brand new Orca Aero. Arnaud de Lie has stopped our hearts these first few days, accompanied by a team in perfect formation carrying their leader to the finish line every day.
The days will come in the mountains, but for now there are still moments of glory for that insurmountable feeling, that of being more powerful than the wind. Long live Orca Aero.
