Mavic Ellipse Track Wheel - Rear

The Mavic Ellipse Track Wheel - Rear is sold individually, which makes sense for a wheel built specifically for the velodrome — track riders often replace or upgrade a rear wheel on its own rather than as part of a matched set, especially when a flip-flop hub is involved. Mavic built the Ellipse for everyday track training and racing rather than purely top-level competitive use, and it sticks with clincher tires specifically because they're faster and more practical to change trackside than tubulars.

The rim uses Mavic's Maxtal aluminum alloy, a proprietary material the brand developed to offer a better strength-to-weight ratio than conventional 6106 aluminum. Rather than the more common pinned or sleeved rim joint, Mavic builds the Ellipse rim with its SUP welding process — the rim joint is arc-welded and then milled smooth, producing a stronger, more consistent joint than a mechanically pinned rim and eliminating the slight flat spot or weak point a pinned joint can leave. The rim runs 30mm deep with a 15mm internal width, a semi-aero profile that holds speed on the track without sacrificing the lateral stability a track wheel needs under constant hard effort.

The rear hub is a flip-flop design with double-sided threading, so two cogs can be mounted on the same wheel and swapped simply by flipping the wheel around — useful for track riders who need to change gearing between events without swapping wheels entirely. The hub uses a high-flange design and a wide-dish build, both of which Mavic points to as contributors to the wheel's stiffness, and it spins on QRM+ sealed cartridge bearings that Mavic designed to be field-adjustable rather than a fixed, non-serviceable unit.

Spokes are 20 ultra-bladed stainless steel, laced 2-cross at the rear to help the wheel handle the higher torque loads a fixed-gear drivetrain puts through the rear wheel compared to a freewheel setup. The cog thread follows the standard ISO 1.375-inch x 24 TPI track spec, with a left-hand-threaded M33x1 lockring — the reverse threading keeps the lockring from working loose under the backward pedaling force track riders use to control speed on a brakeless bike. Mavic rates the wheel for a combined rider, bike, and equipment weight up to 264 pounds, and it's built to handle pressures up to 130 psi with a 23mm minimum tire width.

This is a wheel for track riders serious enough to want a purpose-built rear wheel rather than a converted road wheel, whether that's a velodrome racer swapping gearing between events or a rider doing regular track training who wants the stiffness and reliability of a wheel engineered specifically for fixed-gear track use. It's a rear wheel only, built for fixed-gear cogs on a brakeless track bike, not a freewheel or geared road drivetrain.