Specialized Diverge - Jack of all Trades
If you remember riding your first bike as a kid, you’ll recall the unconquerable compulsion to ride over potholes and through the worst road muck you could possibly find. A good thwack of the tar-black chain on the stay and the bounce of the under-inflated tyres would accompany your childish shriek of delight as you bullied your bike and your bones over highly inappropriate terrain. Sadly, that innocent bike-battering attitude is something that does not last if, or when you graduate to road cycling, where a string of potholes can see riders turn back and find another way to the café or even get off and walk.
New designs for every type of riding, be it gravel, adventure, cyclo-cross, touring, endurance, crit-racing, are popping up left, right and centre, but a single bike to cover all these bases is hard to come by. That’s where the Specialized Diverge comes in: one bike to rule them all.
The Go-To Bike
There might as well be a picture of the Diverge under the word ‘versatile’ in the dictionary. The whole range, which includes five models with both alloy and carbon frames, is not necessarily suited to any discipline in particular, but with a Tarmac-esque low head tube and angles borrowed from the Roubaix, the Diverge is just as happy (and fast) on the road as it is off. As far as touring and ‘adventure’ is concerned, it may not have the geometry and componentry as we have come to expect, but equipped with rack and mud guard mounts, the Diverge is certainly not going to baulk at the challenge. Where it comes into its own is on the road less travelled, which might include gravel tracks, forgotten roads left to crumble, bridleways and cobbles.
If you’re going to keep just the one bike that covers everything from the club ride to gravel riding, the Specialized Diverge is the bike for you. For all-year-round riding, you can’t do much better than the Elite DSW.
“Where does that go?”
On a carbon road bike, there is not a great deal of scope for proper exploration in rural areas, unless you are content with the concept of walking or turning around. The Diverge challenges that boring attitude by equipping its rider with the tools for both on- and off-road riding, allowing you to indulge the temptation to go down that dark and gravelly road that leads you know not where. It doesn’t matter if the road dissolves into mush churned up by tractors, or if the surface has not seen a dribble of asphalt since Fausto Coppi was in his prime, the Diverge will gladly take it on thanks to the wide tyre clearance (up to 32mm), relaxed geometry and cushioning Zertz inserts. On this bike, “the only thing holding you back is yourself”.
Reignite your childish wonder for cycling and the world around you with the Diverge Comp, complete with full carbon frame, Shimano 105 and hydraulic brakes.
The Ultimate Winter Bike
The winter months are a great time to throw yourself at the rubbish roads and enjoy a bit of rough and tumble when results don’t really matter. In fact, on the Diverge, you have no excuse for not riding at all. The whole range features mounts for mud guards to protect your riding partners from getting a face full of muddy spray, and the frames are built around an endurance geometry for all-day comfort. With disc brakes throughout the range, and a low-slung bottom bracket, the Diverge is a stable and reliable machine that inspires confidence in riders of all ability. If it’s a winter bike you’re after, this is the one.
There are many things that can conspire against a cyclist to make the riding experience a misery: bad weather, crappy terrain, uncomfortably aggressive geometry, pathetic brakes, a bone-shatteringly rigid frame… The Specialized Diverge is designed to get rid of all that, making it a bike that should – by all accounts – have a place in the stable of anyone and everyone who calls cycling a passion.
(Pic credit: road.cc)
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