Lightweight Makes Its Grand Tour Debut

A brief glance at any company’s timeline will reveal certain benchmarks that stand out along the journey from start-up to successful business. Those may include the launch of a first product, a move to a new HQ, or the development of an innovative technological advancement—or as is the case with Lightweight, the sudden appearance on a grand, global stage.

“A friend called me at the time and said, ‘Heinz, turn on the TV. Riis and Ullrich are riding your wheels.’”

At Lightweight, our history is one comprised of many incredible moments. Some have been the product of fate, like the way founders Rudolf Dierl and Heinz Obermayer’s similar interests first brought the pair together. Others are the result of years of hard work, sweat, and dedication. Most, however, seem to be some combination of the two: chance and commitment coming together to guide a revolution in the world of cycling.

“It was the Tour de France in 1997 when things really exploded; we didn't even know for certain how good our wheels were.”

Speaking with Lightweight co-founder Heinz Obermayer, he shares his first-hand experience of one-such serendipitous, company-defining moment: Lightweight’s debut in cycling’s biggest race.

“We hadn't had the opportunity to thoroughly test the wheels before, and there they were, racing down the mountain at 100km/h. I had wet hands at every stage. To this day, I don't know for certain how they got their hands on our wheels for this first Tour.”

For both Dierl and Obermayer, the journey from hand-building wheels in a small garage to seeing them ridden on the steep roads of the Tour de France had been a long one. With a joint background in the aerospace industry, the pair’s entry into the world of two-wheeled competition had actually begun in a different sport entirely, horse harness racing. But when the innovative product Heinz and Rudolf created failed to gain traction with the more traditional equestrian set, fate and dedication joined forces again, and both men refocused their sites on an even-more challenging task: developing carbon cycling wheels capable of handling the rigors of professional road racing.

Armed with engineering know-how, redoubled determination, and a consumer-grade oven in which to cure their carbon wheels, Heinz and Rudolf spent every spare hour following their passion of applying space-age materials and methods to the terrestrial pursuit of human-powered performance and speed. In 1990, they hit their first-product benchmark with the creation of the ULTEC disc wheel, designed for triathletes and time-trialists in search of more power and better aerodynamics.

Within four years, the first carbon-spoked wheel was ready to roll out of their workshop, which quickly received UCI approval upon launching in 1994, followed by the duo’s first aero-rim wheelset the following year. Throughout this period, as Dierl and Obermayer tinkered quietly behind the scenes of cycling, dedicated to a craft that would soon revolutionize the sport, they had to do so in what little free time their day jobs would allow.

“Up until 1996, I had a full-time job, and then after that, until 8 or 9pm, I was working on the wheels,” Obermayer recalls, “so it was a crazy time with lot of blood, sweat, and tears.”

It was that year, in 1996, when Lightweight wheels first began to shake up the competition in some of cycling’s biggest races—first in the US, ridden to a silver medal by Rolf Sørensen at the Atlanta Summer Olympics, followed by notable palmarès at the World Championships and Vuelta, before stealing the show on the sport’s grandest stage: the Tour de France. In a stunning demonstration of the performance of this still-unknown brand, Danish rider Bjarne Riis pedaled his way into the Yellow Jersey, and TDF history, atop a set of Deirl’s and Obermayer’s hand-built wheels.

And while Riis’ victory may have been the biggest yet for Lightweight—the brand still operating under the name Hylight at the time—it certainly wouldn’t be the last. As Obermayer recalls:

“The first [pro riders] that we noticed at the time were Johan Museeuv, Bjarne Riis, and Jan Ullrich. Many more quickly followed in the early days such as Marco Pantani, Mario Cipollini, Lance Armstrong, Jens Voigt, Joseba Beloki, Laurent Jalabert, and Erik Zabel. Since then, our wheels have been used frequently in all big competitions—most of the time without our logo, though. Two years ago, Richard Carapaz even won Olympic Gold on our wheels.”

The following year, a different rider, Jan Ullrich, would win the Tour de France, but he, too, would do so with Lightweight. Demand grew as Lightweight wheels steadily became the best-kept secret in the pro peloton. The pair moved their headquarters to a larger farm nearMunich to increase production, but even so, the waitlist for a pair of Lightweights was considerable. When asked about the biggest challenge during this period, Heinz doesn’t delay in his reply.

“To be honest, it was keeping up with the demand. At some point all I could think of was wheels, wheels, and more wheels. I was seeing wheels when I woke up, and they were what I dreamed of at night.”

Getting a hold of Deirl’s and Obermayer’s increasingly sought-after wheels wasn’t just a challenge for amateur cyclists. Even the pros struggled to secure a pair, and famously, they were required to pay for the privilege of Lightweight performance just like everybody else—even Lance Armstrong.

“[Lance] had ordered the wheels from us through Johan Bruyneel, the sporting director of US Postal, and wanted several sets at once. But we were only able to deliver one because he hadn't pre-ordered. The wheels are made entirely by hand, and we could only make two a day, so he had to wait for the other sets.”

Lance’s subsequent Grand Tour victories did little to quell an ever-lengthening ordering queue—which at one point had riders waiting a year just to receive a wheelset—but his use of Lightweights did expose the brand to an audience outside of Europe. And working with the likes of Lance and other riders of his caliber had the added benefit of motivating both Heinz and Rudolf to continue pushing their own personal limits of possibility.

“From my experience, there is something interesting that happens when working with the best. You inevitably get better, too, if you care enough,” Heinz explains. “So, this really helped throughout the history of Lightweight. Working with the best makes you better, too, and it always drove us to get up every morning and make things better than the day before.”

It was with this mindset, the company flourished, reshaping the sport of cycling one day—and one victory—at a time, always focused on the next major achievement while never losing site of the brand’s humble beginnings. As Obermayer describes it:

“Lightweight has grown tremendously since then. At the time, we could manufacture only one set a day, so two wheels—today it’s more than 40 wheels per day. Also, the material and manufacturing processes we use now are, of course, very advanced compared to what we used at the time. Our oven back in the day to harden the wheels was a regular kitchen oven and we got the foam core from the home depot. It’s not comparable to the high-end manufacturing and materials you see at Lightweight today, but we always made it work with what we had at the time.”

As far as what lessons still ring true for Heinz to this day, it’s a familiar refrain that’s accompanied Lightweight from first wheelset to numerous World Tour wins:

“We can do so much by pursuing little improvements every day. We never expected Lightweight to blow up to this proportion. And it didn’t happen overnight, but we knew we wanted to improve things every single day. The joy of improving for the sake of it, and not necessarily for the end result, has been one of the biggest takeaways for me, for sure,” Heinz says, adding, “Looking back now, I´m very proud and happy of what we created. There is a quote from that time that stuck with me ‘If you don’t try, you never know what’s possible.’”

As for how else the wild ride with Lightweight has impacted Heinz Obermayer, he leaves us with one final thought:

“This time definitely shaped the way I think until this day. Every time my wife asks me to fix something around the house, my first thought is always, could I fix this with carbon?”