Roval Control SL Team Wheels - First Ride Review

The world of the carbon-rimmed wheel is a complicated one. After all, you need to know why you’re making your rim out of expensive carbon fibre instead of affordable, durable, but ductile aluminium. The Roval Control SL Team is singleminded in its approach and its reasoning. With the newest Control SL wheels, Roval wanted two things – to make the lightest mountain bike wheelset ever, and it still wanted to make it durable enough to withstand hard racing on the terrifyingly technical World Cup cross country courses out there.

I was lucky enough to get four days of flat out riding on the wheels on the rocky, gritty, sandy trails of Rancho Cacachilas in Baja California Sur. And, while I’m certainly not a World Cup racer, I think that five rides and over 130km of riding technical trails blind was a good test of the durability and puncture-resistance of these top end Control SL Team wheels from Roval – a company that claims the title of ‘the biggest carbon wheel manufacturer in the world’.

My test bike for the test was a carbon Specialized Epic full suspension bike, the kind of machine you’d expect to be racing these wheels. Tyres were initially a pair of Specialized Fast Track – minimally treaded XC race tyres, though I did swap to a front Ground Control after a couple of rides, just for a bit more steering precision in the soft granite soil. Incidentally, it went up with a standard track pump.

The wheels were set up tubeless and tyre pressures were left to us to adjust to suit – I went for my normal 20PSI front and 24PSI rear, although I generally run a bigger tyre than the 2.3in Fast Traks. The wheels had Shimano Microspline freehubs fitted and six-bolt discs.

The extensive trails of Rancho Cacachilas were an ideal testing ground for the wheels. The trails are hand-built and the surface varies from gritty, decomposed granite soil, to bedrock, to hand-laid rocks and trail features – the kind of thing you might see on a good cross country race course. We couldn’t do anything about the weather, which was best described as ‘arid’ but for an all-round test of the Control SL Team wheels, it was a pretty good place. Combine that with a trail layout that winds through the folds of the hills, with plenty of switchbacks, fast off-camber sections and a bunch of bike journalists all trying to passive-aggressive race each other and you have a pretty good race scenario.

The Ride

The first thing about these wheels that you notice is the speed of pickup. The King-like buzz from the wheels comes from the 54 tooth ratchets of the DT Swiss EXP internals. The single-side-sprung ratchet engages near-instantly when you need to put the power down and buzzes pleasantly when you’re freewheeling.

This instant feel is compounded by the lack of weight in the whole system. With a pair of wheels coming in at around 1250g, and adding 640g Fast Trak tyres, I’ve used trail tyres that weigh less than my front wheel. On the many switchback climbs, it was a constant exercise in brake, turn, power through the turn and then accelerate back up to the rider in front – and while this kind of full-on riding is rarely ‘fun’, it was very satisfying to feel the bike spin back up to speed so quickly.

Obviously, what crawls up gets to plummet back down and the descents were a similar routine of flying down the off-camber bench cut trails, before braking hard, turning and then accelerating back up to warp speed. I spend all of my time focussed on the trail’s contours and not worrying that I was on a pair of wheels that weighed less than any wheel Roval has ever made – road bike wheels, time trial wheels, whatever – the Control SL Team weighs less. And yet, I didn’t think to baby them over the rocks and feather them round the corners. They possess the feel of an all-round trail wheel – rather than a ‘save for special days’ pair of race wheels, and with a 29mm internal width, they’ll happily take chunkier non-race rubber too for trail riding and training. Roval reckons that the new wheel deflects 57% less than the previous Control SL.

It’s interesting to note that, despite the 24 spoke construction and light weight rim, Roval’s weight limit on the wheels is an impressive 270lbs/122kg or 19 stone. Even at 80-or-so kilos, I didn’t feel that the wheels were being stressed at all. If anything, they became boringly invisible over the riding we did and it was only on looking back afterwards that we realised that of our riders – around 20 riders from race-fit pros and former pros to chunkier career writers, not only hadn’t had any wheel failures of any sort, but we hadn’t had a single puncture – despite riding in rock and cactus-laced terrain with the kind of recklessness that you only do if you’ve not paid for the bike you’re riding.

Roval claims that the Control SL Team needs 22% more force to pinch flat than the previous wheel. And with flat tyres being the number one reason for losing time in a cross country race, that’s a good figure. There’s also a two-year ‘No fault crash replacement policy’ – where if you smash a wheel, Roval will repair or replace it for free – and a lifetime warranty on workmanship and manufacturing defects after that. Not too shabby.

Mexican World Cup racer, Joel Ramirez puts the wheels to work as intended…

The timing of the new wheels would have made sense – with the new Roval Control SL Team Edition coming out at the same time as the Specialized World Cup team and in an Olympic year. Obviously that’s all turned on its head, but for racers and trail riders wanting a bit of extra speed for when the races do resume, then these wheels are going to be well worth checking out. Obviously they are eye-wateringly expensive at just under two grand – and exclusive – with only 600 pairs being made available worldwide. However their use goes far beyond the cross country race course and they’ll doubtless find their way onto ultimate trail bikes too.

20 riders, a half dozen rides between them over four days. Cactus forests. Rocks. Not a single puncture. Impressive.

Price aside, I can’t really find a single thing to fault them on. Perhaps blue isn’t your colour or doesn’t match your bike (though it is a fantastic metallic decal). Otherwise, if you’re on the look out for race-day wheels you can train on, or a way of losing weight on your short to mid-travel trail bike, then the Roval Control SL Team is something you really need to look at.

Review Info

Brand:	Roval
Product:	Control SL Team
From:	Specialized.com
Price:	£1950
Tested:	by Chipps for 130km

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)