Ritchey Break-Away Carbon/titanium Review - BikeRadar

The Ritchey Break-Away packs down small enough to pass as just another suitcase when you check in for a flight. At your destination it assembles into a sweet-handling road bike that’s perfect for long days in the saddle like l’Étape du Tour. So that’s where we tested it.

The biggest problem with getting a last-minute place to ride this year’s Étape du Tour was that by the time I came to booking my flights, no more bikes were being allowed on the plane.

I needed a bike that would fit in a normal suitcase so that it could be checked in as standard hold baggage. Other than sawing in half my favourite bike and fitting S and S Machine couplings, or taking a small wheeled bike, there was only one solution – the Ritchey Break-Away.

As budget airline baggage weight allowance is well on the stingy side, (15kg with Ryanair), we opted for the titanium/carbon road frame as the basis for our jet-setter. Coming in at a claimed 4.2lb (1.9kg) for the 56cm frame and fork size, this was the best chance of being able to build up an excess-baggage-charge-beating Étape weapon.

Packed in its own 8.5inx26.5inx31in, subtly logoed suitcase, the cunningly disguised Ritchey checked in easily.

Ride & handling: responsive & sure-footed

Once we’d put it back together at the other end (we’ll get into the details of that in a moment), the Break-Away was the perfect companion for the hundred-odd miles of this year’s Étape.

Fast, smooth and efficient on the main road haul to the foot of the Tourmalet, the titanium frame happily soaks up road buzz.

Titanium in itself is no guarantee of ride excellence, but this frame’s qualities shine through, as its designers have used butting and profiling to bring out the very best of the metal.

The slight curve in the carbon seatstays must also help the frame’s ability to absorb road bumps and buzz.

This quality becomes apparent when you head for the hills. Take the Étape’s Tourmalet or Hautacam climbs for example. Whether changing up to a bigger chainring and rising out of the saddle to push round slower riders, or sitting in and spinning one of the granny gears that I was so grateful to have, there was no flex or loss of efficiency, just fuss-free forward propulsion.

Coming down the unevenly surfaced switchbacks of the 2115m high Tourmalet onto the 40mph sweeping straights of the valley below there was certainly nothing to complain about on the Break-Away – other than the miserable weather.

The assurance of the WCS full carbon fork that comes as part of this package certainly helped.

Frame/Chassis: easy to dismantle & rebuild

Disassembling and reassembling the Break-Away is much easier than you might think. There’s a great YouTube video showing you how it’s done, and it only took me a careful 15 minutes to do.

The joint on the down tube is made up of a flange on each tube held together by a steel coupling. There’s a hinge on one side and a tightening bolt on the other, so it’s easy to use and perfectly adequate for the forces that this tube needs to endure.

It’s also no more visually intrusive than a front mech clamp you might often see near the bottom of a seat-tube.

The join between the top tube and seat tube, on the other hand, is a thing of beauty. There’s an Allen key seat clamp on the end of both tubes which, by holding the seatpost in place, also holds the two tubes flush against each other.

Undo the down tube coupling with its one bolt, loosen the two seatpost clamp bolts, slide it out and – voila! – the bike comes in half. Genius.

The frame is available in seven sizes, from 48 to 60cm. The larger sizes share a tight and responsive geometry, the top-tube lengthening as the size increases. For the smaller sizes, the head and seat-tube angles are skewed slightly to avoid your toes snagging the back of the front wheel at slow speeds. 

Equipment: light spec & triple for the long haul

The overall lightness and fancy finish of the bike are also helped by the top-end Ritchey WCS kit that we’ve specced on this build.

The £235 WCS Carbon Logic II bars might well be an extravagance, but they are super-light, beautifully finished and bend just where you want them to, giving you plenty of variety for hand positions on a long, hard ride.

The WCS Carbon 4-Axis stem costs an appropriately high-end £120. Ritchey claims four times the strength of straight aluminium alloy for this carbon-wrapped alloy number, and we certainly didn’t feel any flex.

Given the choice of spec again, we would be tempted to go for a lower spec bar and stem, and spend the change on the best wheels we could afford.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the WCS Protocol wheels here. At £320 a pair, you get titanium skewers with nice long quick-release levers. You can tell Tom Ritchey’s a real cyclist used to changing wheels with cold hands.

The pair weigh in at 1,548g; only 60-odd grams more than Mavic’s Ksyrium SLs, which cost £266 more.

You’ll notice from the photos that we’ve used an Easton alloy seatpost. A WCS Carbon seatpost would have matched the rest of the WCS kit better, but they don’t really come long enough for the big sizes. Considering the larger Break-Away frames all have the same size seat-tube, longer legged riders will probably want to consider a 350 or even 400mm post such as Ritchey’s alloy Comp post.

The Shimano Ultegra groupset that we chose for this Euro sportive build hardly needs any introduction. Smooth shifting and faultless, unfading braking – even after climbing and descending the second mountain of the day in drizzling rain on greasy roads.

We chose a triple for the obvious reason of more, and lower, gears. With hardly any significant difference in weight, Q-factor or chainline issues over a double, and not having ridden these climbs before, the triple chainset was a no-brainer.

The big range of gears gave me more cadence options and smaller steps between gears for the long climbs – so I was never forced to pedal out of the saddle. And while I could have ridden the stage with, say, a compact double chainset of 34/50 at the front, if we’d had the 40-degree heat of previous years I’d have needed as many gears as I could get.

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