Some interesting commentary on geometry and handling although there are no absolutes... my Ron Cooper that has racing geometry does everything remarkably well while my Proctor road bike has a steeper head tube and longer chainstays and is a brilliant bike to have on climbs and is not at all twitchy at speed.

The Cooper also excels at distance riding... it is no more fatiguing to ride this than it is my touring bicycles and the ride quality is something to be experienced.

My 1957 Peugeot PLX has a longer wheelbase and is a rando bike... it climbs like a goat on steroids and lots of this comes from those longer chainstays also being stiffer... in the days of steel bicycles the best way to add stiffness without adding weight was to make the rear triangle as tight as possible while newer alloys and materials like aluminium and carbon fibre can allow for a longer wheelbase without compromising stiffness.

We have built TT bikes with longer rear stays to increase the wheelbase and better centre the rider... they gave up nothing to conventional frames and had the UBI not been such a backwards bunch when it came to design you might see bicycles with less conventional frames in races.