Why this boring carbon fork will make your old bike great again

It might not look like much, but this fork was one of the geekier delights at this year’s IceBike show, the annual gathering of all things Madison in Milton Keynes, UK.

Released by Genesis as an aftermarket option for the evergreen Croix de Fer, the CGR One fork is a bit of a unicorn thanks to its spec: full carbon construction, a straight steerer, disc brake mounts, thru-axle and a glorious excess of bosses to which one can bolt things.

• Genesis and Saracen 2019 gallery: updated Datum, lighter Zero, brighter Traverse
• The Saracen Levarg is “gravel” backwards and we are triggered by this

Genesis CGR One fork specs

• 24T carbon construction
• 12mm thru-axle
• Dynamo cable routing
• Flat mount
• Internal hose routing
• All the bosses (including Anything Cage and mudguard mounts)
• 40mm tyre clearance
• 50mm offset
• 1 1/8in straight steerer
• Axle, fork expander plug and top cap included

Why is this significant?

For starters, Genesis stopped speccing the Croix de Fer with a carbon fork a number of years ago, so existing owners with steel forks now have the option to upgrade.

Perhaps more importantly, the new fork will work on any number of other bikes thanks to its very standard 1 1/8in straight steerer. And you could even fit it to frames with tapered head tubes with an adaptor.

So if you’re looking to add extra mounts to your bike up front, want to shed some weight, or just fancy some disc brake and thru-axle action, the CGR One could be the solution.

At £350 it’s not exactly cheap, but the price doesn’t seem all that unreasonable when you consider that there isn’t anything else quite like it on the market.

The main rival we can think of is the Rodeo Adventure Labs Spork, but that’s got a tapered steerer so it won’t work in older frames with skinny head tubes (it’ll fit 44mm ones with a specialist external headset, however).

Genesis and Saracen 2019 bikes

We’ve already covered the main highlights from Genesis and Saracen’s 2019 ranges, but the brands brought a handful of more recently updated models to the show.

Genesis Croix de Fer 10 FB

£999.99 gets you this rather tidy looking flat bar version of the Croix de Fer with Sora components.

Genesis Equilibrium

The Equilibrium range will now comprise just two models, one of which has rim brakes. This tasty retro-styled machine gets 105 R7000 shifting and has a Reynolds 725 chromoly frame with a carbon-legged fork.

It costs £1,399.99.

Genesis Equilibrium Disc

The disc model’s spec sheet listed 105 5800 components but the bike on display featured R7000 too, and comes in at £2,199.99.

We’ll amend this when we know which is the correct spec.

Saracen Levarg FB

This flat bar version of the Levarg gravel bike has a 1×10 Deore setup and costs a rather reasonable £899.99.

Saracen Myst Team 29

This delightfully lairy machine is the latest ride for the Madison Saracen Factory Race Team. Punters can’t buy this exact paintjob but they can have this near-identially specced bike for £5,799.99.