So, finally something genuinely interesting and actually quite innovative arrives amongst the stacks of Eurobike pics currently swamping the browsers, twitter feeds and Facebook pages of cycling fans around the world…

I present to you, the Hope integrated cassette and freehub:

Frankly, genius.  Well, if you run Hope hubs that is.  But I bet it won’t be long before other companies follow suit. 

Being both visually attractive and lighter than standard separate items (and that’s using SRAM XX as the benchmark) I suspect it’s only a matter of time before the likes of Mavic, DT Swiss and Reynolds are producing similar systems for their own wheels, maybe to be followed up by the likes of AX-Lightness and Tune offering carbon examples… ok so maybe not that last bit, but stranger things have happened.

I can’t help thinking that this has taken longer than it should have done though?  A fine thing to say in hindsight, admittedly – but headsets went integrated quite some time ago now and bottom brackets have been heading that way for a while (even if nobody can agree what is actually the best method to do so or width of axle to use).  Then of course there’s the ‘love it or hate it’ integrated seatpost, and the ‘it isn’t lighter so why bother’ integrated bar and stem.  To me this seems like one of the “of course!” moments and it makes me wonder what else we’re missing…

Regardless, I’m tempted to switch to Hope hubs just so I can have one!