Originally Posted by
Dave Mayer
But this does not apply as much to tubulars, since tubular rims are already superior in heat dissipation.
This is flat-out baloney. Tubular rims don't have any advantage in heat dissipation over clinchers. You could say that overheating is less dangerous with a tubular rim, and that would be a reasonable argument. A tire failure from too much heat is not as dangerous as on a clincher rim. A brake surface failure on a tubular rim is also arguably safer, since the tire is more likely to stay in place, where it is pretty much guaranteed to come off on a clincher. But a brake surface failure is still bad news, and not any less likely to happen. And brake fade from pad glazing is just as likely with a tubular rim, and just as dangerous.
There's no physical way that tubular rims could shed heat significantly faster than clincher rims, and they don't. If you want to argue that heat-related failures are less dangerous with tubulars, go nuts, that's true enough. Personally, I don't think that being less boned if you overheat a tubular rim is terribly relevant to the question of whether or not discs are a good idea, but as I already said, IDGAF what anyone thinks about that anymore.
I think the bone of contention in this thread was already sufficiently chewed-over in the article linked in the OP. It demonstrates pretty clearly that (surprise!) professional racers are group of people with diverse and varying opinions on disc brakes. Just like the BF Brain Trust. I could tell you that, of the pair young guns who are currently winning every cross race in sight, Mathieu van der Poel rides disc brakes exclusively, while Wout Van Aert seems to stick with cantis. That tells you... well, not a whole hell of a lot, really. One thing being better - whichever one it is - doesn't mean it's going to grant a race-winning difference every time. People still win bike races on non-aero bikes all the time. That doesn't mean that aero bikes don't actually have less drag than a non-aero bike. They do. It just means that there's a lot going on in a bike race and sometimes the differences in equipment are less than the winning difference. The difference is real nonetheless.