Originally Posted by
rydabent
Lately it seems that all of a sudden there is a hatred of triples. IMO they are great. I have thot so ever since I bought my "last bike" with a triple back in '86. BTW I have bought 4 bikes and a trike since then. They all had triples.
Anyway there seem to be a lot of talk about 1x and wide range 2x bottom brackets. IMO having the granny gear is a great bail out gear when all of a sudden you come to an unexpected really steep hill. After all a 26 tooth granny and smaller, weights almost nothing.
1. Marketing. Fewer Shop Keeping Units mean increased profits. This also drove the move from 130 (or 135) and 110mm BCD 5-arm cranks to 110mm BCD 4-arm units. Shimano and Campagnolo high end cranks are now compact only.
2. It's not "all of a sudden." The marketing push to replace triples with compact doubles is about ten years old. Fortunately that's recent enough you can still get NOS Campagnolo Record triple parts from 2006.