Originally Posted by thechoux

I don't have an issue with it - people are free to dump their cash into whatever they choose and I don't particularly care. I was just wondering if a $5K bike makes anyone a better cyclist than they are on a $1.5K bike.

Judging from the responses so far, people fall into one of two camps:

1 - the common-sense cyclists who point out that it's the quality of the guy on the bike that makes it fast.
2 - the high dollar bike buyer who misses the question completely and starts arguing about how they bought a $7,000 bike for $3,500 because they got a great deal, then mentions nothing about the human factor in cycling performance.

Yeah, I'm sensing that riders who buy a bike that has an MSRP over about $2,500 like to let their bike brand define them as a cyclist, while riders who buy bikes with MSRPs between $1,000 and $2,500 let their legs to the talking.

What am I missing here? (I do acknowledge that there's people who get pleasure out of owning something very nice, and that's cool. But I'm still not convinced one little bit that the same guy on a $1,500 bike and a $5,000 bike wouldn't have exactly the same performance.)