Originally Posted by
Ritterview
But they don't. It must be, therefore, that the inertia of rim weight is not negligible.
True...
But then again, we're not professional cyclists who have eeked-out just about every ounce of fat on their bodies and achieved a level of performance where tenths and hundreths of a second count and those .15% - 1.9% values have far more impact than they do on "fluffy" weekend warriors enjoying a spirited club ride, a nice metric or perhaps a 200k rando... which has been the context of the most recent chapter in this thread.
Then again, I haven't investigated why pro riders choose the wheels they do for certain stages of late --
and in particular UCI rules that most likely prohibit the use of certain equipment outside of a time trial -- and Lord knows there are a whole lot of different things to consider when trading off things like wheel strength, stabilty & confort against weight, drag and of course sponsorship agreements regarding what equipment will be used by a given team and/or athlete.