Originally Posted by
bruce19
First, what I posted was not meant to be a statement. It was a question. Thus the question mark. Second, it had nothing to do with anything you said. You are reading way too much into my question. I had a 10 yr. layoff from cycling and when I got back into it things had changed. One of those things was sloping TTs. The only time I had ever seen a sloping TT was when it was a "girl's bike." Everything I had ever seen/read said that to find the right size bike you should start with some formula based on your inseam measurement. (I think Greg LeMond's coach, Cyrille Guimard, said it should be .667 of your inseam in cm) As so many people have pointed out that is not the standard practice anymore. My question was really about the origin of stack and reach as a tool. Since horizontal TTs are no longer common, in fact kind of uncommon,, did stack and reach evolve as a more accurate way of fitting people to slopping TT bikes? Or something like that.
Think of it this way: Stack and reach were always there, and were always important. But the need to clear the horizontal top tube always used to trump considerations of stack and reach. Now that the sloping top tube gives us the freedom to fit bikes much more perfectly in the areas that really matter, stack and reach have assumed their rightful place as the main considerations.