Rondo Ruut v2 Carbon Gravel Bike with Broken Seat Tube beats Specialized to the punch

This week, a sneak peek from an internal meeting with their Polish distributors has revealed an all-new Rondo Ruut CF Gen 2.0 gravel bike with a unique frame featuring an interrupted seat tube. Well, it would have seemed like a completely unique frame design… until we saw Specialized's Angled Strut frame patent earlier this week. But while that one is still just a concept, Rondo's new Ruut is already a rideable bike.

And we got confirmation that it will actually be available later this year!

First, a shout-out to Przemek from Rondo-dealer bike shop Velopoint in southeastern Poland who shot the video and shared it on his YouTube Gravelowy x Velopoint channel. His little leak gave us a sneak peek – and a lot of solid screenshots – plus the impetus to badger Rondo directly for more details.

And surprisingly enough, Rondo was happy to both confirm the new bike and give us a bit more detail. It is real. It is the new 2023 Rondo Ruut CF Gen2.0 gravel bike. Its design has been in development since 2020. It is on the way. And it is more comfortable than ever. It's just not quite ready yet.

Of course, they were still cagey on the specifics.

The most obvious thing is that interrupted seat tube design. Just like we uncovered in the Specialized patent, Rondo's longtime technical product manager Marcin Skiba confirms rider comfort was the primary driver in the new design. As to that patent, Rondo isn't too concerned as their solution predates Specialized's design and doesn't actually overlap with their very specific flexing elliptical Angled Strut filing. And Rondo, almost surely will be first to market, anyway.

Plus, Rondo is also not afraid of saying that they think it just "looks cool", too. Interrupting the continuous tube from the seatpost down to the bottom bracket "helps tremendously" apparently, as the carbon frame can flex more vertically without sacrificing lateral stiffness or overall handling.

One other issue they did confirm is that the new Ruut is a few grams heavier than the original version, but not much. While we questioned if the interrupted seat tube design made it heavier, Rondo said it was more about the conscious choice to prioritize the unique rectangular boxy tube shape look of their latest styling. They were never going for the absolute lightest bike possible, and are happy with the balance of their gravel bike's unique aesthetic combined with competitive frameset weights.

The new carbon Ruut will also be 1x only – no place to mount a front derailleur now – but almost all of their gravel bikes have already been 1x for years. The new bike also moves to fully internal cable routing via a new Rondo-machined alloy stem and through what appears to be a flip chip headset based on the "Vario Geo" label on the top cap.

Marcin also confirms that the internal routing is quite flexible & forgiving. And the new Ruut will be available in several 1x specs when it launches later this year, with both mechanical shift & electronic shift drivetrains available. This bike is already built up with a mechanical rear derailleur AND mechanical disc brakes!

While the Ruut has shared a single general design for CF carbon, ST Steel, AL aluminum & TI titanium version since its debut – this new carbon model will be the only to feature the interrupted seat tube design. The ST, AL & TI bikes will get updated soon as well, just with more conventional frame designs.

When we pressed them, Rondo agreed to send us this single frame rendering from the presentation we spotted in Velopoint's original video… but no accompanying tech details. That's fine, we can dig out plenty of details on our own.

Besides that new frame layout, the bike still has Rondo's signature TwinTip fork with flip chips at the front axle to let you pick from racy or more stable gravel geometries. The new fork also appears to get a big disc-side aero fin to smooth airflow over the brake caliper.

It also gets the same boxy headtube design that we first saw on last summer's Ratt all-road & Mylc adventure gravel bikes. Plus, there are dropped chainstays for big tire clearance, a 27.2mm seatpost, T47 threaded bottom bracket?, flat mount disc brakes, 12mm thru-axles, at least two sets of cage mount inside the front triangle polygon, toptube bag mounts, under downtube cage mounts, maybe a set of rear rack or fender mounts, and what appears to be a UDH for compatibility with current and future rear derailleur standards.

This carbon gravel bike we’re seeing is still officially just a working prototype, although it is essentially a final design. And it is certainly rideable. In fact, it is the personal bike of Rondo's COO Tom Cybula who introduced me to the original Ruut gravel family all the way back in 2017. Tom has been riding this next-gen Ruut around the sandy dirt & gravel roads outside Gdansk and seems pretty happy with it.

Word is that the new bike is ready to go into regular production early this summer.

This is really where the details from Rondo start to run thin. This new Ruut 2.0 is a 2023 model year product, and it will be available to consumers later this year. No exact dates were provided for either an official launch or real consumer availability. Our informed guess is that we’ll probably get the full technical details on the new gravel bike this summer at Eurobike (or soon thereafter) and it will be available in bike shops round the end of summer/beginning of autumn.

Rondo.cc