A closer look at the ‘disruptive’ Ribble Rebellion crit bike: part artwork, part race machine

With a custom paint job that looks as though it’s come straight from the brush of Roy Lichtenstein, Matt Bostock’s Ribble Ultra SL R is hard to miss. 

The Ribble Rebellion rider’s performance at the recent Eddie Soens Memorial race in North West England, where this photo was taken, was equally impossible to ignore. The Manxman animated the handicap race in the final few laps of the Aintree circuit, closing the gap on the leaders on several occasions before being pipped at the line in a sprint by Jack Hartley.

The Ribble Rebellion team is a brand new squad for 2024, hoping to ‘disrupt the global crit scene’ this year.  

Beneath the striking colours – the bars and forks of each Ribble Rebellion rider’s bike is unique to them – Bostock’s Ultra SLR is the quintessential modern aero bike. The frameset is a monocoque design built using a combination of Toray T1000 and T800 carbon. Its deep tube shapes are born from computational fluid dynamics as well as both wind tunnel and real-world testing. 

Interesting too are the alien-looking handlebars, which have been specially designed for use without handlebar tape, and feature direct mounting for the Shimano Ultegra R8170 shifters.