Originally Posted by
Spoonrobot
Racing Leadville and Chequamegon on a drop-bar Factor MTB is a straight line connection what Tomac was doing in 1990 with the Yeti. A difference of degree, not of kind.
UCI banned drop bars for MTB so it's a moot point anyway. Nobody is going to be exactly like Tomac because now it's illegal.
MTB racing has changed a lot since the 1990's. The tracks that Tomac raced on in the early 90's are very tame by today's MTB race standards. In the video above, he even admits that the bars were a disadvantage on some courses back then, particularly on the downhill sections and really only worked well on the XC portions. If you watch videos of MTB racing in that era, it looks a lot like modern day gravel or cyclocross racing. The courses were mostly wide open gravel and grass, with a few jumps here and there. They didn't have rock gardens, ramps, huge drops, etc.
Drop bars work on this:
They aren't going to work very well on stuff like this:
Or this:
or this:
