Originally Posted by
Wogsterca
You can trade in any of these factors, a wheel with 16 very thin spokes will probably run into the mechanical tension limit before getting enough spoke tension with a 100kg plus rider. So the wheel will break spokes while 36 spoke wheels with thicker spokes do not run into the same problem, which is how this myth got started. Now a 16 spoke wheel with large diameter spokes might also not run into problems, but that kind of wheel is not very common.
Actually, most of the 16-spoke wheels that I've seen, including the cheap (US$80) one that I own, use spokes that are more than adequate for a 100kg rider
when properly tensioned. Unfortunately, too many LBS employees tension every wheel like it has 36-spokes and that just doesn't work with lower spoke-count wheels...