Cannondale's brand new Scalpel HT is a race-ready hardtail that gets a super-light frame with a handful of neat weight-saving features along with special flex zones to reduce trail chatter. Then, there's an aggro geometry and of course, it's specced with the brand's famed Lefty fork.

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Cannondale says that the Scalpel HT is a new breed of cross country race bike that's designed to get you right up onto the top step.

To get you there, it's built with a proper aggro xc geometry featuring a 66.5° head tube angle for stability and control. A large frame then gets a 450mm reach with all frames getting a 75° effective seat tube angle.

Then, the Scalpel HT uses the brand's Proportional Response size-specific chainstays to keep you balanced on the bike, and enhance grip, says Cannondale. As such, a small frame gets a 430mm chainstay while the extra large comes with a 445mm measurement.

Speaking of chainstays, the Scalpel HT benefits from sculpted flex zones that are paired with dropped seat stays to smooth out trail chatter and minimise fatigue.

A Cannondale cross country bike wouldn't be a Cannondale cross country bike without a Lefty and that's exactly what we've got here. This bike gets either 100, or 110mm of travel delivered by a Lefty Ocho with needle bearings to reduce friction. With 100mm of travel, the head tube angle is steepened by 0.5° degrees.

The new Scalpel HT comes with a hint of connectivity too. That comes from an integrated rear wheel sensor that'll send speed, route, and distance info straight to your phone through a free Cannondale app.

Continuing with the cool features we get on this frame, it comes built with convertible cable stops. The idea behind this is to allow riders to run internally routed cables with full housings to keep the elements at bay or to run the cables partially housed so riders can make the most of every weight saving.

Finally, the frame by itself weighs in at 895g.

There are four models of the Scalpel HT on offer with prices starting at £2,600 for the Shimano Deore and RockShox SID SL equipped model and they go right up to £6,200 for the Hi-MOD1 model that gets a Hi-MOD Carbon frame with a mix of Shimano XT and XTR shifting.

• www.cannondale.com

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