Miles2go

There have been at least a couple of Giro riders that have over-temped their disc brakes and shot right off the road. Maybe if they increase the size of the disc rotor by several factors, the increase in surface area will prevent that...then again...there's always rim brakes. Get the popcorn started.

Pro Blames Disc Brakes for Losing at Giro

WhyFi

Mojo31

When you lose you look for excuses, regardless of the type of competition you are in.

Miles2go

I guess it is human nature to discount the word of someone having road racing as their actual profession, riding more miles than most everyone reading this article, having bikes which are maintained by some of the most skilled mechanics, etc.
He breaks down how crappy of a day it was for him, on many levels, including disc brake issues....but there's no matching forum wisdom.

Iride01 

Obviously you just started watching Tours and Grand Tours. Back in the days of rim brakes only there were also plenty of issues. Like the rim getting too hot from braking and the tire rolling off the rim.

Miles2go

Right, those were the days of tubeless tires right? oh, wait...I think we're talking about tires glued onto the rim. ....wonder what happens when you heat up glue. Yeah.

Seattle Forrest

Really?

WhyFi

So when someone cites an off-the-wall absurdity as an excuse, we're supposed to swallow it because they've ridden more miles than us? I might buy your line of reasoning, but you're going to have to tell me how many miles you've ridden, first.

veganbikes

Look I get that they ride a lot but a decent portion of them when it comes to bikes really not very knowledgeable, they are like the cycling friend every needs to schlep to the bike shop to question the actual professional who sells and works on a wide variety of bikes daily vs. the one bike that rider rides. Trying to blame disc brakes for spoke failure is absolutely silly. Having too few spokes which is the trend these days and loading them with the brake force at the hub is causing issues and also using smaller rotors and things like that. Now if the mechanics went and said yeah that was the cause I would say OK maybe something to that but just being a rider doesn't mean you need to know about the bikes and how they work beyond just operating them while riding.

Every pro is going to want to have something to say when they didn't win. Sometimes it is positive like "hey he was just a better rider, I need to train harder" and sometimes it is "my brakes overheated broke a spoke and yada yada".

Regardless though whatever braking system they use someone is going to say another braking system it better. That is part of the fun.

genejockey 

Tubular. And these still are the days of tubular tires in the pro peloton, though some are riding tubeless, I hear.

Troul 

The operator needs to know when to respect the equipments limitations.
If the course they faulted on was ridden by the same person, using a bicycle not equipped with disc brakes, exerting the same level of performance [& techniques] , & before the current mishap; would the times & speeds be equal or any better?

In the end, the general non pro rider will buy what they want.

Koyote

Sometimes spokes just break.

cxwrench

I was a pro team mechanic for over a decade and I'll just say this: Pro racers are some of the most ignorant, under educated, know-nothings when it comes to bicycles that I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with. Most of them have absolutely zero clue. The only things they're truly good at are riding, eating, and sleeping. Believing a pro that says his spoke broke because the disc brake caused it to get too hot is an absolute joke.

ClydeClydeson

Yes, discs get hot, sometimes very hot, and yes, sometimes hot enough to cause braking issues. No, that heat will not be sufficiently transferred (through the 'spider' on the rotor and through the hub's disc boss and out the hub's flanges) to the spokes such that it would cause the metal of the spokes to weaken... that's absurd.

Disc brakes DO, however, put a load on the spokes in a way that rim brakes do not - rim brakes stop the rim directly, while disc brakes stop the rim by exerting force on the hub which pull on the spokes to stop the rim. Enough to break spokes? Maybe over the medium term after many miles. If that is how that pro's spokes broke then it is an issue of not replacing the wheels or spokes soon enough, or of some other problem with the wheel build or configuration. It's easy to forget that lots of riders in that event (and many other events and grand tours) use disc brakes, yet only one person complained of the disc brakes causing spokes to fail.

Perhaps the rider got to the finish line and the team mechanic was embarrassed that a bike in their stable had a problem, and rather than admit the wheels didn't get the attention they needed before the race, or that the wheels given to the team by a sponsor had a failure, used the excuse that it was the discs' fault,

surak

waiting for Specialized to slap "for flat and uphill riding only" stickers on the revised Roval wheels, then have their marketing claim the next version with more spokes to be safe for downhills and the fastest yet.

Kai Winters

Maybe he is correct and had a problem with his disk brakes.
Perhaps he overheated the rotors by too much, continuous braking.
Perhaps the brake pads were fairly worn or a bit contaminated which resulted in overheating and loss of braking power. We've seen videos showing the pro mechanics washing, etc. team bikes...they are not the most careful because of how many they have to prep, only so many mechanics to do the work, etc.
Perhaps he was just too hard on the braking and plain old overheated them...could have happened with rim brakes...they too would have failed when needed most.
You would have to remove the parts and look at them closely to see if there is a mechanical reason for failure.
I'd want to talk to the rider to hear how, when, etc. they failed.
It is interesting.

Oh it is a lot of fun to be in a race and the rider in front of you rolls his sewup...you know the next few seconds are going to be hair raising fun for those behind.

spelger

he still has a few miles to go.

Miles2go

I didn't confuse tubulars and tubeless (raced a decade on sew ups), so read it again knowing that I meant to say tubeless, then oh wait!...no, we're talking about glue, tubulars, sew ups.

Miles2go

Of course not. The discussion wouldn't be as interesting if I didn't paint that picture. Now we can see that pro cyclists don't know what they are doing, bike mechanics might not be maintaining the brakes properly, etc., etc.

genejockey 

The problem is, it doesn't make sense.

Iride01 

Races of any sort for the last couple centuries have almost always involved manufacturers showcasing and doing practical testing of their latest technology. If we are only to race on proven and trouble free technology, then we'd probably be riding the stuff that was cutting edge back in 1903.

Jack Tone 

I'm going to make a wild assumption: There are very few, if any, pros that ride their brakes down a hill in a race. I really doubt if there were any over heating problems.

aplcr0331

He also said he had a sore back.

By the way his teammate actually won the stage...Wonder what kind of brakes was he using?

PeteHski

But from his quote he clearly doesn't understand the engineering. His profession is riding bikes, not designing them. Whatever caused the spoke failure certainly wasn't heat from the brake disc.

WhyFi

Got it. So let me see if this sums it up, then -

You came across a statement from a pro rider that was so dumb that it didn't merit discussion. Since you wanted to generate a discussion, you decided to adopt the position of an intellectually challenged devil's advocate.

Is that about right?