Heh. I was reading your response while thinking "well, it works but I can't explain why". Then your next response said the same thing as I was thinking.

I'm not very good at proofs, meaning proving something is something. I'm more caveman in that respect - I try something, with some thinking, and if it work it works even if my reasoning may be flawed. I've been off base for sure but I've also been right (even though I didn't know why - I've had other people actually go out and prove my theories for me, just to "double check" what I was saying).

A more forward weighted position will allow the rear to break loose before the front. Not sure if you were saying that but that's what I've found. I have locked up and/or slid the front (for example in the city once I had to brake really hard as I came up to a light post-sprint - a whole lot of anti-freeze over oil on the ground acted as lubricant and I slid the front wheel a good 5 or 10 feet and somehow stayed upright). With a rearward weight bias the front becomes light and easily knocked off line, whether by other riders or by surface irregularities.

Whether for better or worse I've apparently modeled my set up in favor of oversteer, not understeer. It wasn't conscious, it's just that I've fallen when my front wheel got swept out sideways and I didn't like it. Keep in mind that no matter what I do to try and move weight forward I still have a lot of weight on the rear wheel. It's sort of a relative thing, like saying that Porsche balanced out their 911 by moving a lot of weight forward. The bias might have been something like 75% rear / 25% front and now it's 65% rear and 35% front, a major change (and totally made up in my mind but I think the second number has a basis in reality). However the result still is an extremely heavy rear weight bias, it's just less so. On the bike I know I still load the rear tire more than the front, it's just that it's loaded "less more". I feel extremely uncomfortable when the front tire goes off line. The rear, no biggie, and I've even used snap oversteer (usually when inadvertently planting a pedal in a hairpin) to get through a turn better.

It's possible that I've been cornering well in spite of my set up but I don't think so. I tried a more rear bias set up (that "winter set up" I mentioned before) and it definitely didn't work for me.

At any rate the kicker is that in that picture I'm a bit forward on the saddle but not as far forward as I could be in the throes of a final lap push for position in a crit. In some corners I'd slide much more forward on the saddle.

Relating to saddle/BB - I bought an Ares saddle (short nose saddle for those that don't know it) specifically to see if I could set up a bike to meet UCI specs. Since the still-new and very-expensive-to-me saddle has never been mounted I don't know the answer to this question.

As far as the bike design, I commissioned the black "aero" frame at the end of 2010, taking delivery in early 2011. After I was done admiring it and all that I realized that I'd ordered a 1998 technology TT frame. Ha. I had that moment of recognition when I was on the trainer watching some Tour DVD. They showed Laurent Dufaux starting his prologue in the 1998 Tour (the Festina affair) and I was like "Wait! His frame is just like mine!". One of these years I may get into the right decade of bike tech.