Bianchi Oltre XR4

It was January 2013, I was still wet behind the ears and we had just come back to the office from our Christmas holidays. ‘Stu!’ I exclaimed to then-deputy editor Stu Bowers. ‘You’re not going to like this, the Bianchi must have gotten a double puncture.’ In the workshop rack, both of the Bianchi Oltre XR’s 23mm tyres (remember them?) were forlornly flat.

It was my first experience of tubular tyres and, as I learned, they have