Originally posted by fore
i've covered this before, but i'll assume you missed it.
would you rather see a bike race won by the strength of the competitors or by the budgets of the sponsors?
to me, and i think a lot of others, what makes bicycle racing great is that when it comes down to it, it's still really all about strength and strategy. and thankfully, NOT about who can dump the most money into R&D.
Maybe then what would help would be stock racing for bikes. The competitors could ride any bike they wanted as long as it was part of a production run of more than 2,000 bikes, and the bikes were available to the general public for some figure, perhaps $2,500. Then we could see technologies go head to head against each other. Another resstriction might be that the competitor had to ride the same bike for the entire race, assuming a stage race, and could only repair or replace components on the bike. This would keep bikes from being too specialized for climb or time trial, and would also keep them from being too fragile for general use. Recumbents could do well in time trials, but would die on the climbs. Maybe they could throw in some dirt paths to ensure that the bikes were not too fragile for every day use. The bikes that win would really be useful for regular users.
I think bicycling would be far better off for having a race like that. The competitor who was fittest could win, but different competitors might choose different bikes because of variety in body build. For example allowing more development might lead bigger competitors to choose longer cranks with bigger chainrings, which they would pedal at a slower cadence. We would all be better off if we knew what the potential were for longer cranks.