Factor HANZŌ Track helps Aus Cycling to win gold

A little over two years ago, Factor Bikes began discussing with Aus Cycling the possibility of developing their track bike fleet for 2024 and 2028. The initial goal was to have the fastest team pursuit bike ready for Aus Cycling to race in the summer of 2024.

Though development time was tight, by combining our resources, we succeeded in having the Factor HANZŌ Track pursuit bike paired with ultra-fast Black Inc Zero Track disc wheels ready to race on the biggest stage in the world. The HANZŌ Track is unique in the Factor lineup because it is the first bike we’ve designed where we really lead the project initially by using CFD development.

“We spent four to five months just in CFD before we made any prototypes for the wind tunnel and this is a big step for us having in house CFD that we could really learn quite a bit about how a product will work in real world situations,” Rob Gitelis, Factor Founder and CEO explained. “We did about 50 iterations of carbon fiber layups, we gave Aus Cycling 4 to 5 of those iteration layups which we then narrowed down to two which we then narrowed down to one which is the bike they raced.”

Aus Cycling sets a World Record on the HANZŌ Track

A testament to the engineering excellence behind the creation of the HANZŌ Track, in the very first qualifying event on Monday evening at the National Velodrome, Team Australia set the fastest team pursuit time of 3:42.958. The Australian quartet of Oliver Bleddyn, Sam Welsford, Conor Leahy, and Kelland O’Brien entered the qualifying round against defending champions Italy with a lot of momentum and full of confidence.

“It has been a bit of a surprise to see 42 seconds (3:42.958) to be honest,” Sam Welsford said after the heat. “I was not expecting that. We had a lot more to give at the end of that race.” If they surprised themselves with such a fast opening time and still had gas left in the tank, then they only confirmed that stellar performance with their result in the qualifying round.

Racing on the Factor HANZŌ Track with Black Inc ZERO Disc wheelset, the Aus Cycling team got the jump on the Italians from the first moments of the 4 km pursuit event and quickly pulled out a 0.451 advantage in the first half lap. And their lead would only grow from there. By the 2 km halfway point, it was clear the Aussies were on a world record pace with 1:53:540, which was already 1.289 seconds up on the Italians.

By the time they crossed the finish line with a time of 3:40.730, Australia had devastated the Italian’s world record, slicing 1.3 seconds off the time set in Tokyo in 2021. They had earned their spot in the gold medal round, guaranteeing themselves a medal in the team pursuit. The effort also secured Factor Bikes our first world record, validating not only the proof of concept, but all the months of hard work that our engineers and master carbon craftsmen invested in the project.

Going for the gold

Rolling up to the starting line racing against Great Britain, Australia were considered the favorite to win the gold medal largely because their qualifying time had been over a second faster than Great Britain’s. Once the race got underway, the two teams, which have been frequent rivals for the top spot of the podium over the decades, hardly had two-tenths of a second between them the entire race.

Once each team got on top of their gears and up to speed, the Australians was consistently in the lead, but not enough for comfort. It would all come down to the final half lap of the race to decide who would be the next Olympic champion. Though Australia was still leading, a touch of wheels on the British line sealed the deal. Team Australia riding the HANZŌ Track, featuring the beautiful design inspired by the Australian Indigenous artist Chern’ee Sutton, won the gold medal in a thrilling finale.

Gold medal winning bike

In development for two years, the HANZŌ Track was tailor made for the Australian national track team. Optimized according to the latest UCI design regulations, the Factor pursuit bike offers ultra-efficient aerodynamics and maintains supreme rigidity for power transfer.