Seriously, if you haven't experienced issues, you won't understand or have much to offer to this thread.

You're correct though, in that cheap/heavy stems are oftern times stiffer than their weight weenie cousins. Hence some of the previous statements and suggestions earlier in this thread.

And, again, it's not about supporting weight on the palms of our hands. It's about applying torque by pulling down while to increase the speed with which one can complete the downstroke and accellerate the bike. Perhaps I should have put this in 'racing'. Although, when I'm competing for 250 out of 500, you can hardly call what I'm doing 'racing'.