Conti – Value for Money

I’ve been asked by both our retailers and cyclists in general, why Conti tyres are more expensive than opposition brands. Well, in general, they are more expensive at the top end of the quality scale but there are several good reasons for this. I’ll tell you about one of them:

This is, quite simply, the best tread compound ever developed for bicycle tyres. Team Sky were not sponsored by Conti tyres last year. Their star rider Chris Froome refused to use anything but Conti after the team had a season peppered with a series of punctures and wet weather grip and handling incidents on the tyres they were using at the time.

The team then purchased Conti Competition Tubbies for Froome from the Conti UK distributor. Froome, as we all know, won the Tour de France on these tyres last year. It gets better. The tyres he used were off-the shelf items, not the special Pro Series Competitions which are limited production tyres for use only by the top Pro teams. Says a lot about Conti quality you buy off the shelf. Good enough to win the world’s most prestigious road race. For 2016 Team Sky is back on Conti.

So just how good is this rubber? In a nutshell, grip on Black Chili Compound is 30% better than Conti’s previous best tread rubber which was a very expensive mix called Activated Silica Compound (ASC), and that stuff was already better than top quality standard rubber. Rolling resistance of Black Chile is 26% lower, cut resistance is substantially better, and tyre life is 5% to 10% longer.

Innovation like this is behind the success story that is Conti. In the past 100 years Conti have won more World Championships and Olympic Gold Medals than all other tyre brands combined.

Nice bragging rights!