Young Aussie Sam Douglas is spending a few months in the USA and when he raced the Ironman 70.3 Raleigh we looked closer at his Merida Time Warp race bike. The Time Warp is a bike Merida introduced for 2010 and has since been replaced by a bike simply called Warp. But young and upcoming Pros don't always get first choice in terms of equipment.

Douglas raced the bike below to 6th place in Raleigh and I would consider this young man a great ambassador for the brand that will snatch him next. .

Sam Douglas is very tall and so is his Merida Time Warp.

The Time Warp has a distinctive curved downtube.

Merida calls the white section Modular Head and it can be replaced with ones of various height.

The seatstays of the Merida Time Warp.

Douglas has a very narrow Profile Design T2 cockpit with a Svet base bar.

An FSA stem holds the cockpit and the cables disappear into the frame behind the headtube.

The Prologo Nago Evo Tri 40 saddle of Sam Douglas is slammed forward.

A sponsor decal marks the correct seat post insertion height.

The old school SRM power meter looks to have seen its best days. Douglas rides 172.5 cranks.

Two Serfas carbon cages for nutrition on the course.

The Zipp Disc does actually not belong to Douglas. He has no wheel sponsor, and the set on his bike were loaned to him by a friend.

That friend must have tried to get rid of the the decals as only a few are left on the 808 front wheel.

All images © Herbert Krabel / slowtwitch.com