GlennR

Or when it gets warmer and the tires get stickier for better handling.

Ever watch down hill ski racing?

BillyD

Who're you calling a horse?

Da Reef

The 15lb limit only made power meters and aero bikes more common. Sub 15lb bikes being produced today are just as safe as 19 lb bikes. Lowering the weight limit to 10-12lbs would create a lot of excitement and advancement.

Marcus_Ti

"Safe" for whom? Start looking at the components spec'd on lighter-weight bikes and you start seeing rider weight limits posted. Particularly handlebars, seatposts, wheels, and pedals.

The UCI peloton also gets away with it, because they only ride on other-worldly freshly brand-new paved roads that most of us never get to see or experience....and also their athletes are fly-weight.

lsberrios1 

Yeah, like Paris Roubaix.

Doge

Generally in UCI races not much. Often the pros don't have as good as you can buy. Why use a 12lb bike when they have to add 3lbs to make UCI 6.8kg. Then there are sponsor constraints. If you are sponsored by a tire mfg - you are expected to use their tires or get slapped (team Sky).

kbarch

I'll grant you the points about safety and rider weights, but the point about the roads....
You must be thinking of the Emirates or wherever they held the world championships recently or something. Aside from that, the roads they ride on in the Grand Tours and just about every other race are just regular roads, most of them no better than your ordinary county, farm, or park road anywhere you're likely to have ridden. Sure, some stretches are improved here and there, but I'm sure you've ridden on fresh pavement at least once in your life, too.

Doge

Pro can't take the risk - because of the limit. There is no limit on <25mm profile wheels FWIW.

Still, the lawyers are strong, and no mfg want's to deal with that.

Personally I am a weight weenie - for fun. Some of the light stuff has fit/size function issues. Pros need to change tires, bikes (teammate gives them a bike) and mechanics swap parts in the fleet all the time. The mechanics are brutal using pressure washers etc.

Pros ride very "std" stuff.

Marcus_Ti

Incorrect. Most of the roads in Tour de France for example are freshly repaved, specifically for the TdF coming through. My typical roads here have 1-2" unsealed and unfilled cracks, potholes galore, and no shoulder at all. You're better served with a high-volume 33mm+ CX tire on our "paved" roads here in Nebraska than anything resembling a roadie racing slick. Next door in Missouri AAMOF, they are superlative-in that they have the highest percentage of MMR in the USA (that is minimum maintenance road-AKA roads built and never touched again as they're too broke to ever fix them).

Omaha?s answer to pothole complaints: a new dirt road ? The Denver Post


Yea. My roads are just like those on the Grand Tours. BTW our "country farm or park roads" are not even paved or graveled. They're bare virgin not-even-packed dirt. Just like the Grand Tours indeed.

CliffordK

I did see some photos of crews upgrading cobbles... But some of the TDF roads don't look like they've had much work done on them since the 1800's.

Marcus_Ti

And those stretches of cobbles in the classics...well the ASO has to beg and or bribe city/hamlet governments into not replacing and paving them. At least if the Eurosport commentator crews are to be believed.

CliffordK

I'm not sure if their stuff is standard, but one of the rules is that the products must be publicly available (and thus technically available to any team too).

I was browsing one of the weight weenie sites, some of the vintage aluminum rims were surprisingly light. So, low profile isn't all bad. But, there is an obvious tradeoff between weight and rim profile. So far I've been avoiding carbon fiber spokes.

CliffordK

Probably true. The TDF and Giro d' Italia move around every year. But, I think the Paris Roubaix is rather fixed. I would imagine that many residents along the course enjoy the once a year event, and might not want to lose the race.

It has been a few years since I've been in Italy, but the cobbles were popular in many cities in the late 1980's. In some places they were pretty miserable at holding onto chunks of glass.

The large paving stones in Parma were pretty wild to ride on, although I do remember a few streets that had been recently repaved with fresh cobbles. A huge difference.

I did find a street near Terni, Italy that may well have had 2000 year old cobbles. They last a long time. That would be wild to ride on. DEEP ruts in the granite.

Marcus_Ti

The thing with cobbles....they last forever, unlike asphalt or concrete. Especially on the Great Plains where conditions are as varied and severe as Siberia. Completely Dig up and repave a road, it'll be a hazard to navigation inside of 5 years out here. The Nebraska Department of Roads struggles to even keep up with the maintenance and expansion of I-80 corridor...I-80 between Lincoln and Omaha Nebraska has been in a continual state of construction (along some stretch of it) for as long as I've been alive.

Here the rural locals don't worry about cobbles. You go to the EU and what vehicles do you see? Small fuel-efficient things for the most part-that aren't fun to ride rough roads. Farmtown USA-only retirees who physically can't step up into pickup trucks aren't driving them—they're in Cadillacs with balloon suspensions enjoying the slow life.



Take Dirty Kanza 200 or Land/Run 100 or any Great Plains "Gravel Grinder"....the organizers don't have to struggle to find dirt roads. Most all of Kansas and Nebraska etc. are hilly unpaved and not-even graveled roads. Which is why and how they can easily change the route.


Which brings us back to the topic....All of which is why I raise an eyebrow with regard to UCI racing bike durability. They ride what to us on the Great Plains are fairy tale roads.

kbarch

OK. I forgot some parts of the country are devolving back to the 19th Century, but I don't think "most of us" are consigned to never riding decent roads. Surely you don't believe they re-pave the Champs Elysees and 2200 miles of French highways every year just for the Tour to ride over just one time, one day, do you? Or are the roads in Nebraska really that bad? But seriously, you bring up an interesting point - the impact of cycling on roadbuilding. It's not insignificant. I was reading somewhere recently about how the first bicycle craze of the late 19th/ early 20th century played a big part in the drive to improve roadways; there were more people who wanted to ride their bikes on the road than there were motorists.

But back to the Pros of today... A couple of years ago, I followed the Giro for a few stages and rode many of the same roads, and NONE of them were freshly paved. Like I said, sure, for big events some towns make an effort to clean up and re-pave some sections, especially fast sections in built-up areas and prosperous towns, and long stretches are well-made and well-maintained, but many roads, particularly those in the mountains, are uneven and shoulderless, just like the roads you find yourself on as you head to some national park or ski area anywhere in the US. But I guess you wouldn't know about ski areas, being in Nebraska.
I kid, but do feel for you. I'm originally from the Texas panhandle (flat as a pancake), and although I have fantasies of going back there, I can't imagine what it would be like to ride there - how inhospitable it must be.

Marcus_Ti

All of it? No. But there's a reason you see beautiful flowing pavement and stretches of brand new black asphalt in HD--with seldom any livestock manure staining in the farm-country....not cracked and seem-filled concrete with holes missing.

When was the last time you watched TdF (or any other Grand Tour), and saw a single big old unfilled/patched pothole? How about open expansion joints in white-top every 10m? Chip seal? Rumble bars? Heck even a sub-road-level manhole cover is remarkable and news-worthy, it almost never happens, and when it does there's usually a crash (there was one this season IIRC). About the only road hazards to navigation the peloton ever sees are overzealous and sometimes unmarked traffic calming devices (and the odd fan or crowd barrier footing).

The UCI peloton either gets the most virgin roads to pick from for anything other than very extenuating circumstances (after lobbying race organizers), or they are repaved to be such if they are not, or in the case of some of the those mountain goat roads they're made, or very grudgingly made-due with...or the riders raise holy hell with the organizers. Remember the beachside prologue a few years ago, on IIRC Vuelta, that had a few different surfaces (pavers, tarmac, and sand on pavement, and some wooden boardwalk)? You'd think the Vuelta organizers were serial arsonists for how the roadie peloton divas kvetched and moaned. There was a segment on NBC during TDF a few years ago detailing the road cleaning crews that clean the roads the day of before the race comes through IIRC.


Real paved farm roads in livestock country (where they exist)....they're brown asphalt, and "mud" is a euphemism.

Doge

It would. But it would kill discs and motors.

redfooj

The practice of masking non-sponsored part doesn't happen much anymore.

Mostly it is relabeled/blacked out tires. Sometimes a stem due to rider preferences or a part due to compatibility - like a brake caliper.

What's more interesting is on the UCI Continental tour - with far less visibility and thus publicity value - lots of teams race open mould frames, wheels, 2nd tier components (ultegra, force).... I.e. bikes that are on paper less fanciful than local cat 4, 5, MUP racers.

You bet your ass if the seconds of difference can put a guy from 6th place to 2nd place on average finish and a world tour offer...They would upgrade their own bikes

kbarch

You're right. As a rule, they don't hold races on bad roads, but they are hardly all perfect or new as you claim. And I'm sorry all the roads you have to ride on are all garbage. A lot of the roads I ride on are rather poor, too, but maybe if being able to ride delicate bikes was important to us, we'd go somewhere else and only ride on the best roads, like pro racers do, huh?

By the way, we have different understandings of the expression "Farm road." I grew up in Texas, where it was short for "Farm-to-Market road", a specific system of minor rural highways. Although typically they have no shoulder, they're all paved and striped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farm-to-market_road Evidently such naming of a type of state-maintained roads is unique to Texas - I didn't realize that, for most people, "farm road" probably suggests something quite different.

PepeM

France, in general are regardless of cycling, have much better roads than the US. Race occur in many places though and many of them have poor roads, but it is usually hard to tell on TV.

Da Reef

So true, at least in the near term.

Great thread! I'll be right back...going to race my 205lb self on my 14lb bike down truly POS US roads, for the Nth time...

Doge

My bike (I own it, kid rides) uses power cordz in segmented housing instead of cables, ceramic bearings, silk tires, Di2 and some Extralight stuff etc. My build is safe and durable (for racing) - but too much a PIA for any team to deal with. So team/Euro trips - junior uses a team bike.

On team racing trips (Europe, junior UCI) I've learned the hard way the mechanics don't care and have not time for special configurations.

Soap and water on those tire (a bad thing to do), pressure washing ceramic bearings (also bad) and not wanting to adjust anything non-standard. Junior inherited my weigh weenie gene and 30% of the races were UCI rules - with added weight required to meet the 6.8kg. Junior would remove the lead from the BB for non UCI races, and plan to add back for the UCI ones. He'd forget /leave the lead at the team house.