The picture of the wheel failing mid turn is from the Harlem Crit I'm pretty sure, and the wheel had some history behind it, at least that's my understanding. You can also look at the pictures of Adri Van der Poel racing cross on them, or Bugno winning stages in the Giro while racing with Polti, Mapei (Museeuw) etc on them (due to team sponsorship with Ambrosio rims they usually ran a Rev-X rear with an Ambrosio rim wheel up front), Cipollini winning Tour stages on them, etc etc.
Depending on the generation of wheel I think it'd be okay to ride them. You want outboard bearings up front, all aluminum wide diameter hub between the blades. If you see any kind of a circlip or carbon on the hub between the blades then stay away from them. If there are any chips in the blades stay away (although I rode on a set for 7? 8? years that had a pedal go into them, no problems).
The X-beams really help (they are braces that attach about 1/3 down the blade from the rim). If the wheels are the SuperStiffs (the carbon reinforcement inside each blade is twice as thick) they'll be better. The ultimate would be late generation Spinergys with outboard bearings, full aluminum rings on the hub (no circlip, no carbon visible), SuperStiffs, with the X-beams. I rode them when I was as heavy as 215 lbs, they were my winter training wheel because they were so durable.
The front wheel isn't as stiff as many other wheels out there so I preferred to run a TriSpoke front for races. The Spinergy rear, although heavy, was bombproof for me. The front I only felt okay on the SuperStiffs with X-beams. I had SuperStiffs, one of them was had the ExtraLight treatment (rim was drilled out on the faired side, I couldn't tell except the wheel is more flexible, and the axle was Ti).
Having said all that a similar year TriSpoke would be a better choice in my opinion. Let's put it this way. I gave away the Spinergy Rev-Xs I had, something like 6 or 7 wheels. I kept the three TriSpokes.
Some info on the company (I just found it now, trying to find some pictures of the wheels):
http://pistarice.blogspot.com/2008/1...ev-x-idea.html
It's pretty good, there's a lot more, but it covers the basics. The company got started in order to develop and sell the transmission but it was too fragile and broke too easily. They started selling wheels in order to try and generate revenue, dropped the transmission, and eventually moved from CT to CA.
The picture that led me to that post, Cipollini with Spinergys:
The SuperStiff, the X-beams, they were basically developed in response to the pros' requests. Cipollini complained that the first set of wheels he got were too flexible. They sent him X-beams. Too flexy. They sent him Super Stiffs, with X-beams (I think at the time SuperStiffs didn't exist, they just layered 2x the stuff on the blade). Too flexy. They painted the wheels red and put "LION KING" decals on them. Perfect. Cipollini went out and won some Tour stages on those wheels. Kind of funny. Last I heard one of the ex-employees still has those wheels somewhere.