Men's Diverge Comp

Designed from the ground up as a dyed-in-the-wool adventure machine, the Diverge Comp is your passport to pastures new and routes unridden. Equally adept at clawing up dirt-road climbs as it is on a casual cafe spin or the Sunday road club speedfest, you'd be hard pushed to find a bike that matches it in terms of versatility.

The frame is completely redesigned, making it more capable than ever. The constant goal of the designers and tech experts we had working on the 2018 version of the Diverge was to meet your needs, taking in all your feedback to improve on what was already an excellent bike. The biggest thing we heard from you, loud and clear, was the need for greater tyre clearance, so the Diverge can now run up to 42mm tyres and still have enough room for dirt and mud not to get too clogged up in there. We also made a lot of efforts to shave weight from the Diverge, so we borrowed a couple of things from the Roubaix and built the frame in our FACT 9r carbon fibre, combining unbelievable lightness with impressive stiffness.

Leaving behind the traditional cyclocross geo of the last iteration, we developed Open Road Geometry, a setup specifically engineered around the requirements of exploratory adventures. In essence, we merged the most pertinent elements of road and trail geometry, to create a bike that handles beautifully on both tarmac and hard-packed dirt.

The bike handles predictably but playfully, with plenty of capability for mid-turn drifting and dirt skids. We achieved all this with a lower bottom bracket, slacked out head tube angle, shorter chainstays and by bringing the wheels closer together for a shorter wheelbase.

There's only so much that a wider set of tyres can do when faced with really bumpy terrain, so we've incorporated our new Future Shock tech (made popular on last year's Roubaix) into the Diverge design. This smart addition allows for more predictable handling in the turns, by eliminating the understeer you sometimes get on suspension bikes by keeping the wheelbase the same at all times. The progressive spring we added to the Future Shock on the Diverge means that the bike is equipped to handle larger lumps, bumps and obstacles than the Roubaix with its stiffer suspension.

Really driving home that versatility, we topped the bike off with mounts for racks, fenders and three count em water bottles. All this means the bike can easily be used for touring, bikepacking and commuting, as well as your weekend sorties onto the bridleways and dirt roads.

We specced the Comp with Shimano 105 groupset, hydraulic disc brakes that will stop on a sixpence and a bombproof Axis Elite Wheelset.