"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - Aero Bars in Races???

I recently did a race and it would have best been described as a circuit race I suppose. It was at Barbers Motorsports Park in B'ham, AL and they usually have the Porsche Driving Experience or motorcycle races, to best describe the track. Anyway this is my first year racing and in my Cat 5 race there were at least 3 people I saw with aero bars at the start, and one riding in them during the race as well. I had heard that this was illegal but this was a USCF sanctioned event...

So my question is, is this illegal or just something that isn't normally accepted? I talked with some of the others who were under the impression it wasn't legal but nothing was ever said to the ones with them?!

It's illegal

I believe that you can't have any forward pointing bars (Aero and those "cow horn" bars).

Any reasons they wouldn't have called these guys out on them then? Like I said I saw one of them in the aeros passing the start/finish line once in front of everyone. They did have a metric century that morning that finished on the track as well but that was well before the racing began. Luckily there was no one injured due to them...

Illegal. I was there as a ref (my first time) and we just missed it. We didn't have start sheets from the registration and were rushed trying to get the race started on time. We even had the promoter help us out on the start line taking names. 50 riders in the Cat5 race that day. Over the line it was tough enough to ID numbers since almost everyone had them pinned on incorrectly, much less look for illegal equipment. I'm glad there was not an incident because of it.

As far as I know, we missed just the one rider in the Cat5. The other aerobar riders you saw were participating in the charity metric, where it's not good form, but not illegal.

How'd you do? The son of that father/son BBC Tues night duo came in second [as a junior] in his first race ever.

Illegal. I was there as a ref (my first time) and we just missed it. We didn't have start sheets from the registration and were rushed trying to get the race started on time. We even had the promoter help us out on the start line taking names. 50 riders in the Cat5 race that day. Over the line it was tough enough to ID numbers since almost everyone had them pinned on incorrectly, much less look for illegal equipment. I'm glad there was not an incident because of it.

As far as I know, we missed just the one rider in the Cat5. The other aerobar riders you saw were participating in the charity metric, where it's not good form, but not illegal.

How'd you do? The son of that father/son BBC Tues night duo came in second [as a junior] in his first race ever.

Like I said I thought I saw 3, at least 2 for sure during the name taking portion with one being right in front of the guy taking names. It seemed overall that you guys did well, at least I didn't hear anything negative. There was some confusion on how to pin numbers on and I noticed lots of people with them pinned on different ways. The sheet with our numbers on them showed one way to pin them on but while waiting for our race someone at the start/finsih line said we needed to rotate the ones on our back so some of us got it right, I hope.

I only saw the one actually riding in his aero bars and he wasn't actually a factor in the race. I got in 4 laps before I realized I wasn't breathing very well due to the cold air filling me up, at that point I just relaxed and enjoyed the experience on my 5th lap before pulling off to watch the others finish.

I've noticed we have some pretty good juniors in the area, between the GSMR training races and the Tour de Tuscaloosa events. Hopefully they stay with it as the number of races keep growing in our area!