Originally Posted by
bigtea
UMD, I honestly like most of your comments and think you have a lot of good knowledge to share on a variety of topics. But on this one, we don't see eye to eye.
Here's the big difference, and the essential point I'm making. Cannondale is not making those bikes for other professional riders. They are making those bikes (and you can purchase an exact copy of what is being ridden in the Tour) for non-professional cyclists who pay big $$ for what is essentially a cheat. Think of it as a golfer with fifteen clubs in his bag or a swimmer with fins.
It isn't cheating if you aren't competing in anything.
If people like riding around on a 12 pound bike, then shouldn't that be their choice?
Anyway, a lot (if not most) of this is marketing hype designed to sell products to people who don't necessarily understand the subtleties of geometry, weight distribution, or for that matter anatomy in the choice of a bike. They can understand weight because its a very obvious metric. Bike A weighs a pound less than Bike B so Bike A must be better.
It works the same way in so many other consumer marketing fields, like digital cameras where more megapixels are supposed to be the be-all and end-all, or stereo equipment where more wattage is always better, or cars where more horsepower is definitely a must, or computer CPUs where more Mhz are always faster, and on and on.