Specialized Mondo, these brand new tyres were seen at the Paris-Roubaix

The Morgan Hill brand restores to its catalog one of its reference tyres in road cycling. Tyres that were put to the test by a select group of cyclists in the Paris-Roubaix, undoubtedly the most demanding race for any road tyre.

The Mondo is about to return to the Specialized catalog

In the early years of the 21st century, if you wanted to get the maximum grip, the best rolling and the minimum weight the option was to use tubulars, Specialized dared to launch high performance tyres seeking to match the capabilities of tubulars. It was a time when tubeless technology had not yet arrived on the road bike.

Now, the Mondo, Specialized's black leg tyres, seem to be about to make a comeback, as we saw on the bikes of riders like Lotte Kopecky or Peter Sagan during the Paris-Roubaix race, which were fitted with tyres labeled with this designation on their sidewalls in 700x32c size.

Specialized has not given any information about these tyres, which appear to be a prototype beyond what can be deduced from the sight of them as, for example, that the same Gripton T2/T5 compound is used that we can find in the current Turbo, with harder T2 rubber in the central area of the tread and softer, T5, on the sidewalls to maximize cornering grip.

Of course, these new tyres feature 2Bliss Ready technology, i.e., they are designed for tubeless use. The only thing that can be noticed is that the inscriptions on the casing do not make any reference to the Black Belt puncture protection that the Turbo tyres have, which could suggest that Specialized has looked for a faster tyre in these Mondo tyres.

However, the fact that the testing ground for these Mondo tyres was such a demanding race as Paris-Roubaix implies that some kind of protection system must have been introduced, beyond the typical Kevlar sheeting that is usually placed between the carcass and the tread.

We will have to stay tuned to see what the engineers of the Californian brand are capable of surprising us with.