Cervélo has officially launched the fifth generation of its R5 range, a super-lightweight climber’s bike. It’s a stunning example of a genre that still has plenty of allure, and is a bike I would love to ride. It’s just a shame it costs a mind-bending amount of money, at £5,000 for the frameset alone.
BikeRadar’s ever-diligent tech sleuth, Simon von Bromley, first spotted the new bike at the 2025 Tour de France Grand Départ in Lille, where Matteo Jorgenson and his Visma–Lease a Bike teammates were already racing on unreleased versions.
Even then, it was clear Cervélo had doubled down on trimming every possible gram.
BikeRadar weighed Jorgenson’s size-58cm bike at 7.03kg, including empty bottles. With those removed – as they would be for UCI checks – the bike would sit close to the 6.8kg UCI weight limit. That’s very impressive for a larger bike in close-to-race-ready spec.
With official details now to hand, Cervélo claims the new frame and fork come in at 657g and 302g, respectively. There are lighter frames from mainstream manufacturers – an S-Works Aethos frameset is claimed to weigh 585g, for example – but that's still impressively feathery for a disc bike by any measure.
Complete builds dip as low as 5.97kg – well under the UCI’s limit.
Unashamed nostalgia
And this is where the heart of this gently nostalgic man in his early 30s still leaps a little.
Nobody questions the importance of aero gains, but like many riders, I still romanticise a little about days when the weight figure was the headline spec. And not just because the (often pointless) pursuit of chasing low weight is entertaining.
Although everything has been slimmed down – the pencil-thin seatstays now measure the bare minimum 10mm, and junctions have been pared back – the R5 retains its classic silhouette, and it looks absolutely banging.
The bike and others of its ilk, such as the Orbea Orca, have an elegant air in a way most modern aero bikes don’t, and I’m totally here for it.
It would be unkind to describe this as a throwback to the heyday of the lightweight bike in the rim-brake era – this is a thoroughly modern bike with all of the tech trappings to match.
But it shares a common thread with the classic double-diamond frames of old, and I simply love the way it looks.
The bike for me… if I could ever afford it
And for someone whose road riding amounts to little beyond chewing up the local lanes with pals, with the odd effort on choice climbs or long days thrown in, a good-looking bike that gets me excited to ride is more important than outright performance.
Of course, for the World Tour pros reading this, there is still a performance benefit to climbing bikes – particularly for lighter riders.
As outlined in his excellent piece comparing the bikes ridden at the Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes, BikeRadar’s road and gravel presenter Ollie Smith highlights that the typically lighter riders in the women’s peloton have more to gain by opting for lighter bikes.
However, as appealing and high-performance as the bike might be, there is the unfortunate question of cost.
Cervélo will offer five complete builds at launch, priced from £8,500 to £11,500. Framesets are £5,000. That’s a breathtaking amount of money, no matter how deep your pockets are.
In fairness (if you can call it that) to Cervélo, an S-Works level Aethos frameset is also £5,000.
Difficult as it might be, putting the wild price aside, I’ve still got time for brands that haven’t abandoned the traditional climbing bike – even if few of us can ever afford them.
For all the rightly deserved aero hype, there remains a place – and a powerful emotional pull – for beautifully light, simple, classic-looking race bikes. And for riders like me, that’s reason enough to get excited.
