http://www.flickr.com/photos/6337399...th/7122608451/ there are a bunch of cracked rims here. Anodizing does make a rim brittle no one has ever explained why this is being done. I have managed to make non anodized rims fail these were overloaded and had a lot of miles on them. On the alesa the spoke holes deformed on the araya the sidewall bulged. Equations governing brittle materials are different than those governing ductile materials.