I suspect that Cycling Tips draws the wrong conclusion from the dataset provided by Strava. This could be because it’s not as catchy a headline, or that nuance is hard. Either way, I think the real output of the data they analyzed should be “which bikes do faster riders prefer” instead of “The top 20 fastest road bikes”…
It’s also interesting that the Canyon Aeroad is top of their list, and I think that’s probably has something to do with Canyon’s direct sales model. There’s simply no way to walk into a store and impulse buy an Aeroad. You need to know it exists, understand the value prop, and wait for it to show up. Which makes it much less likely that there’s a bunch of “trophy” Aeroads cluttering up the data.
After a fair bit of back and forth over the past couple of months, working out the parameters to filter all of those millions of activities, Strava came through with a list, exclusive to CyclingTips. Many of the bikes featured aren’t all that surprising, but I’m happy to report that there’s at least one fascinating outlier to keep you on your toes.
