Thomas‘s refined Cento
Thomas is a friend of Christian‘s, owner of Victoire 447. Their original idea was to buy two identical Cento bikes. Eventually, each one of them expressed their own personality, resulting in two significantly different bikes. The Victoire Cento we built for Thomas is sporty and refined.
Thomas‘s bike is made of Columbus Cento tubing. These steel tubes celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the Italian brand and they showcase all of Columbus‘s know-how pertaining to building the ultimate performance road bicycle. The Cento tubes have been worked in a way that not only increases power transfer to the rear wheel, but also increases the level of comfort you have come to expect from a steel frame.
In addition to its serial number, each Victoire Cento is hand-engraved with a number ranging from 1 to 10.
Unlike Christian who chose a regular braze-on seat collar, Thomas chose a clamping system integrated into the seatstays. Olivier, our workshop manager, was given free frein to build this frame.
The tapered headtube from the Cento series blends perfectly with the design of the Columbus Futura Disc fork.
Thomas opted for a US-themed build, with components sourced from Sram, Enve and Chris King. His groupset is electronic, just like his friend‘s, except that his is wireless thanks to Sram Red AXS.
Just like Christian, Thomas chose a hydraulic disc brake system, here with Sram Red calipers installed.
The bike features a complete set of Chris King parts in Bourbon color. This is a very exclusive feature, as Chris King only produced small batches of this anodized color, for a very short time.
The saddle installed on this Victoire Cento is the all-new 3D-printed Fizik saddle. It is just as rare as the Bourbon-color Chris King components: only 16 units have been produced for the French market, including 4 for Victoire.
Thomas took a long time to decide what he wanted for his Cento‘s paint job. We researched pictures from a customized BMW motorcycle in order to retrieve the shade of blue that he had in mind. We then painted tube samples that we showed to him in order to get his approval. Eventually, we suggested a very special black shade to match with this blue, using a fade effect from bottom to top. This metallic black shade turns blue under bright light, creating a surprising effect that totally transforms the bike‘s looks.
