2017 Ridley Helium SL Red eTap/Zipp 302 Complete Road Bike

Zipp’s new 302 carbon hoops. Though the pros at Lotto Soudal ride Campy, this build is every bit equal to the needs of all-rounders like Gallopin and climbers like De Gendt—in fact, we’d be hardpressed to assemble a more race-worthy bike. Which was exactly the criteria behind why we built it the way we did. This is no manufacturers’ slop with garbage wheels and an off-brand crankset. It’s the product of us choosing what we want to ride and building a bike accordingly. Given the “what we want” clause, it’s only fitting we started with a frame that we want to ride. Hence the Helium.

The name Helium calls to mind light, floaty things, which is no doubt what Ridley had in mind when selecting the naming convention. The Helium SL frame and fork are an astonishing 1,050 grams—that’s around 170 grams lighter than most other big-name brands pro framesets and 200 grams lighter than the regular Helium. That low weight is the result of a strategic lay-up of unidirectional 60, 40, and 30-ton high-modulus carbon fiber, whereas the standard Helium only uses 30 ton. The SL also incorporates a nano resin to improve the compatibility of the resin and carbon, which decreases weight and increases durability.

The first time we built a Helium SL, we found ourselves questioning the strange seatstays and seatposts that have become all the rage in bicycle “innovation.” The Helium’s seatstays, which are simple, slightly flattened tubes, combine with the traditional 27.2 seatpost for a compliant ride by devouring road noise and bumps like Helium’s halogen cousins gobble up other molecules’ electrons. It’s far more comfortable a ride than its drive stiffness and low weight suggest, adding additional depth to the “floaty” descriptor we used above.

We’re also enamored with the Helium’s thoughtful blend of internal and external cable routing. The brake cables, which undergo some contortions without getting down near the grime-collecting drivetrain to get where they’re headed, are left out in the open for ease of installment and maintenance. The derailleur cables, which travel dangerously close to the drivetrain and are therefore more susceptible to collecting debris, are routed internally—but it’s a straight shot. No tricky bends or silly, internal tube shapes that you have to guess at in order to get the cables through.