datlas 

As above, it might make the difference of a few seconds on a long climb.

If you are a pro and the difference of seconds matters, fine. For the rest of us, it matters very little.

rangerdavid

I'm calling BS on that one.

mattm

not back then?

bikepro

1986 -- First Carbon Frame:

https://www.lookcycle.com/en/us/look-cycle/histoire.html

datlas 

You are kidding, right?

datlas 

Wrong decade. They had graftek bicycle frames in the 1970's. Too flimsy at the time.

wrote4luck

19lb average back then. I think the lightest would have been a Columbus Air tubed frame (rare, and somewhat flexy) with drilllium heavy Campy Super Record up to 1985, a 56cm bike with this config with tubulars would probably average 17lbs.) All sorts of ways to skimp back then, just like there are now.

lazerzxr

Why, can you tell a huge difference in your bike when the water bottle is full and when it is empty? I can detect a time difference on my local climb (which is about 12km) but it is one of just a handful of seconds. Its not what I call much of a difference and is well within the standard deviation of my times up there anyway.

furballi

Average bike and rider is ~180 lbs. Shave 4 lbs off the bike and the mass goes down by 2.2%. That's well with the nominal tolerances of many scientific laboratory experiments. People are obsessed with 4 lbs but then they carry an extra water bottle and fail to take bathroom breaks, which could shave at least 2 lbs.

Also remember that energy is conserved. One the way down, the potential energy is converted back to kinetic energy. Therefore, the 4 lbs advantage on the way up will be partially negated on the way down.

Six jours

I was racing back then. A typical racing bike was about 22 pounds. It has always been possible to go extra light, however. There was a builder of titanium frames in Italy (the name was Trecia, IIRC), for example, who argued that a bicycle should weigh 10% of the rider's body weight. He was making reliable 15 pound bicycles. I don't believe any of them were used to destroy opponents in mountain stages of the Tour. Klein was adverting very light bikes as well. I remember a magazine testing their top model and weighing it at 16.9 pounds. There were several others; if you had the money it was simple enough to get one.

The same was true well before I was born. Rene Vietto, a champion in the pre-war era, had special 17 pound aluminum bikes made for him and his top domestique for the 1948 Tour. He finished nearly two hours behind Gino Bartali, who used a typical-for-the-day 23 pound steel bike.

Essentially, once thinwall butted steel tubing became standard in about 1940, bicycle weights did not change significantly until the carbon era arrived in the 90s. Fausto's Bianchi weighed 22 pounds, just like LeMond's Gitane (and Hampsten's Landshark). Yet the average speed of the TdF improved by an average of about .75 MPH per decade - a trend which seems to be continuing even today. So it seems to me that while lighter is preferable, it doesn't really affect the outcome of big races.

oldbobcat

Winning, the US monthly of continental pro racing in the '80s, wrote a feature on the Renault-Elf Gitanes used by Hinault, LeMond, Fignon, and the rest. These were not light bikes. I modeled the build of my Gios on these bikes and ended up with a bike that was just a whisker under 22 lbs.

The article didn't go into the frames, but they were pretty much the state of the art in steel for the time--most likely Columbus SL and SP, depending on the size. The gruppo was full Campagnolo Super Record, with steel spindles in the BB and pedals. Wheels had Mavic GP4 rims (400-425g), 32 spokes, 2.0 mm, and Vittoria cotton tubulars (250-280g, depending on the road. Saddles had steel rails--reasonably priced consumer-grade titanium did not become available until the breakup of the Soviet Union. Handlebars were Cinelli, usually Mod 63 or 66, with 1R or 1A stems. Bottle cages were steel. These bikes were built with the primary objective of finishing the race intact. The only concessions to lightness occurred for the time trials when 24- or 28-spoke wheels were substituted. The cool thing about this period was being able to build a pro-grade bike for $13-1600.

Toward the end of Greg's career bikes were getting lighter, mainly with aluminum and thinner-walled steel frames. Also, the titanium finishing bits were starting to come around.

marqueemoon

Nah.

Back in olden tymes nobody gave a damn if Joe Consumer could buy what the pros raced and team mechanics built a lot of wheels.

Six jours

For some reason, some folks seem to think that lightweight is a recent invention. Wheels, for instance... It seems to me that many of us are riding heavier wheels now than were common a few decades ago. The aero carbon rims, for instance, seem to typically weigh in the 400 gram range. But 330 gram rims were commonly raced in my day, and before my time the Scheeren rims were popular at 280 grams. I honestly don't know if heavy aero rims are faster than light box section rims. But then, I doubt that today's ceramic bearings roll nearly as well as the bearings of a few decades ago, because the ceramics are so heavily shielded that it takes two fingers to turn the axle. Which is another thread, I guess...

Sidney Porter

I a missing what different people are arguing about, the links gave the weight of the different tour winners and we say 18-22 until carbon dropped it into the 15 range category. To say weight doesn't matter is I assume that they are saying a 22 lb = a 15 lb bike. Well sure in a saturday group ride it is going to come down to the engine. The 22 year old on the entry level AL bike is going to beat the 40 year old over weight accountant on the $7000 15 lb bike. But if we are talking pro riders they are all in shape and they are all using similar technology and weight. It does matter to them you are not going to see a pro team roll out 22 lb bikes because that is what use to win.

Trsnrtr

I'd go with that. My 1985 53cm Gianni Motta with tubular wheels and Super Record ran about 20.5# with pedals.

waterrockets 

That depends... I've won plenty of races against the college kids, and I'm too fat for this sport like the rest of us, and on heavier bikes...

I'm an engineer though, not an accountant. Maybe that's the difference.

eippo1

I'll let you know when I build up my Della Santa.

eja_ bottecchia

My 1989 Bottecchia, with Columbus SLX steel, came in at around 20 pounds.

merlinextraligh

Incorrect.

Because wind resistance is a squared function of speed, while that potential energy is converted back to kinetic energy, it's dissipated fighting the increased wind resistance.

So you don't get back in speed on the descent what you lost on the ascent.

Setting aside, that it doesn't much matter if you got dropped on the ascent, or it's a mountain top finish.

furballi

Go back and re-read my post. I said "the 4 lbs advantage on the way up will be partially negated on the way down". Partially is NOT fully. The potetial energy is mass x gravity x height of climb. If the mass increase is only 2%, then the PE will also increase by 2%...a rather small amount compared to the height of the climb.

For a very steep hill, most of the energy is spent raising the bike and rider to a higher elevation. A small drop of 4 lbs does not significantly alter the potential energy the equation.

wheelreason

19-20 lbs, the difference between tubulars and clinchers was more pronounced, and accounted for quite a bit of the difference, steel frames didn't really vary in weight much. My 53 cm Masi Prestige w D-Ace (Record crank) and GL 330s was just under 20. Smoothest bike ever.

ultraman6970

I had a Z-team replica and that thing was darn heavy compared with today's standards.

JohnDThompson 

Hmmm, maybe it's not the weight of the bike:

"This analysis examined whether changes in the speed of major cycling races reflect recent anti-doping efforts. Average speeds of 5 (th) place finishers of the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, and Vuelta a España cycling races were obtained for the period 1990-2009. Between 1990 and 2004, the average speed had been increasing by 0.16 km/h per year (p<0.001). In a downturn, since 2004, the average speed has decreased by 0.22 km/h per year (p=0.031). The slowing down of professional cycling races is compatible with the hypothesis that recent anti-doping efforts in professional cycling have curbed the use of performance-enhancing substances."

https://www.mendeley.com/catalog/spee...-mean-cleaner/

Ice41000

Orrrr..... global warming caused more winds and that changed av. speeds.
Or race tactics. Or route differences. Or races being raced by different people.
Or all of the above.

Average speed is useless in comparing races nad even more in making conclusions about doping.

merlinextraligh

Your argument was that weight doesn't matter, in part because you recover part of what you lost on the decent.

The problem with your argument, is that any slight speed advantage on the descent is overwhelmed by the loss of speed on the ascent, 1) because of the squared function of wind resistance, which I already alluded to, and 2) the math of the time lost, i.e. you spend more time climbing than descending and never make up the time.

Hence your premise that weight doesn't matter because you get a portion of the loss back on the descent doesn't hold water.