I came to a few of your pursuit nights as well as some sprints(all of which were on more or less closed courses.) and have done a handful of alleycats. At all of the alleycats there were a significant number of riders who took the race far to seriously and thought the freedom you speak of justified disregarding everyone around them in their race for the middle. Combined with hearing such attitudes espoused here(and complained about) I see no reason not to generalize on my admittedly limited experience.

Of course I basically said this before are you just ducking the hard questions?

oh my god, gary ellis, i remember this picture from like 1995 or so.

...15 yards? Are you sure?

Riders are free to ride how they wish.

I don't want anyone to do anything stupid or get hurt. I generally state just that before a race. I won't lecture people, as you suggested.

I know individuals who I feel do ride poorly and dangerously. I don't like to see them at my races becaue they make street riders look bad. I deal with them as individuals. If they had a history of injuring others I'd probably ask them not to ride. I don't generalize their behavior on the entire population. Generalization is part of the problem, not the solution.

I don't feel that winning a new messenger bag is worth possibly killing myself or injuring someone else. Others may feel differently. I probably won't like them and I wouldn't want to ride with them. At a race I'd make sure I stayed away from them. Maybe I'd imagine them as an H3 with a really tight turning radius. Most likely I'd forget about them and try not to get hit by something that can cause me much more damage.

Most of the races I've been to are won by the most skilled people. People who race dangerously for mid-pack placement don't need to be in a race to ride like that. I see them riding poorly every day all over town. The race just happens to be where they are riding poorly at the moment.

All that said, many preventable race accidents I've seen happen when smart, skilled people do something stupid. There's no way to prevent something like that.

I put the wheel down about 5 feet before the trail turned right. It may have been further, but I was airborne the first five yards. There was plenty of room before the turn, quite necessary considering the size of the jump & the speeds people hit coming off of it. Usually a rider would brake a bit before hitting the turn, but with only the front wheel on the ground it wasn't an option. Intensity = MTB > fixed gear etc, no matter how or what you do on city streets.

My point was that it was unintentional and had a wildly severe result with a lucky outcome. I have balance, experience etc but even so I was lucky the jump didn't break my crown (I'm lucky like that, weighed around 140lbs when racing) and fling me & my bike into the crowd to the left or right, or if I'd panicked on the drop & hit the jump too hard that way but had stiffened up for it instead of flowing with it, I would have just flipped into the landing area and crashed hard 2 feet past the wall with all the force of being flipped off the jump. Any number of things could've happened, it's like that when you're racing. That guy didn't do that on purpose, and it's not unheard of at all to lose something at teh start of a sprint,
you can lose your traction, or your balance, you could accidentally clip out, slip off the bar, throw too far forward, etc.

On a start like that picture shows, if you aren't throwing yourself forward as hard as you can in as controlled a fashion as possible, you ain't racing, you're stylin.

Racing will make you look stupid occasionally because you're supposed to push yourself to the limits of your ability while retaining control, and that doesn't always work out, not by a longshot. No way.

In short, if the guy looks stupid at the start of a sprint, 99.99999 probability he was trying very hard and it went sideways for 'em. Dutret knows this, but can't say because he's already dug in. That BS about incompetence is rookie talk, if you've spent some time racing in any intense sport you know that things go wrong.

From what Dutret has there, the conclusion is that Dutret doesn't need to lean back to retain traction

(at the beginning from a dead stop riders throw weight forward as hard as possible, many keep rear traction by throwing forward and down, then rest back into the seat to spin out seated, I stay seated at all times but the start, I'm out of the seat for 1-2 revolutions is all)

Dutret can't supply nearly as much torque.

(Of course not, but from a dead stop that way torque is initially only a small part of what gets you going, see above. Depending on wheels & drivetrain to get a fast start means that Dutret is a very, very slow sprinter from a dead start but no worse or better than any from a rolling start.)

Dutret can't supply as much torque steadily,

again, this is from a guy who thinks he's seeing a rolling start. One of the reasons riders throw themselves forward at the start is that gear ratio below them, you're not going from 0-20mph anytime soon without taking some action beyond turning the pedals. Even sprinting from a dead stop on a road bike, on level ground I'd start in the 53 in the front and maybe the 23, or as large as I had in back, not a ratio to expect spin immediately from a stop, but add some acrobatics and you'll find yourself ready to goto the 23 bang, bang bang until, if you are able, you pass over the line spinning out whatever you're in depending on race length, at your best cadence.

On a fixed gear, the winners were in ratios they knew they could spin on level ground, but you can bet that in only 250 yards it's fight to insure you're doing that by the end.

I've seen how boring a dead start sprint can be, folks pulling away huffing on their high gear ratios....these folk don't win, slow starts for the lose.

You're acting like the possibility of danger is the same thing as danger. I ride without a helmet every day, and I'm not DANGEROUS, I'm just not as protected. When you pass a pedestrian closely or a car closely, sometimes you get a toot because SOMEONE GOT SCARED even though no one was ever actually in danger. Dutret and others, quit your *****ing unless there's something to actually ***** about--i.e. someone actually getting hurt. All this speculation about what MIGHT and MIGHT NOT be dangerous is ****ing stupid.

No. If you're sitting at your computer wearing a helmet you're more 'protected' than someone that is not. But if you're riding without a helmet you are putting yourself in danger. I ride without a helmet and I know this. Everyone that rides, with or without, should know this. If you deny that you're putting yourself in danger you're only upping the ante by giving yourself false security.

What is ****ing stupid is not wearing a helmet. Especially not wearing one and pretending like you're not putting your life on the line at every intersection and crosswalk.

YES!!!!

YEAAAHHHH!!!

pat yourself on the back, bikeforums! you've managed to derail an argument about real/fake wheelie starts to an argument for/against alleycats and now INTO A HELMETS/NO HELMETS ARGUMENT!!!


i love you people the way i love kittens who get their heads stuck in tissue boxes. go 'head and be adorable. you just don't know any better!

Wait! I am from... History!

I love this place.

You know, it takes skill to figure out a way to turn every thread into a helmet thread.

Yeah, I'm smart enough to know riding without a helmet is less safe than riding with one. My point was more to say that NOT wearing a helmet doesn't mean you're automatically go out and die. A helmet reduces your chances of surviving an accident, but it doesnt decrease the chances of having one (some people hold that it makes drivers give you more space, but I don't believe it.) Basically, when I ride helmetless I avoid the same accidents as I would wearing a helmet. It's not like when I'm wearing a helmet I take more risks. I try to avoid all accidents, and wearing or not wearing a plastic hat doesn't change that.

When people talk about getting into hitting your head against the pavement, wheeliing into other riders, or your front brake cable failing, these aren't things that will DEFINITELY happen to you if you don't wear a helmet, pop a wheelie at a sprint, or ride front-brake only. These are things that MIGHT happen. They might also happen if you wear a helmet, sprint on two wheels, and run a rear brake! But I don't take any of those safety precautions and none of the above have happened to me. Which means they were never dangerous, they were just risks. RISKS of stuff that MIGHT happen to me but didn't.

Biking is taking a risk. Putting yourself on a machine that might fail is a risk. Riding in traffic is a risk. Riding at night is a risk. Riding fixed gear is a risk. I do all of those things and I understand that there is risk involved. I'm AWARE of the risks I'm taking, but I'm also not SO afraid of the terrible consequences that probably won't even happen that I won't even take part in the activity. And the reward I feel riding a bike, a fixed gear bike, and riding it in traffic, and with only a front brake, and without a helmet to me outweighs the risks involved. That's why even though yes, they are risks, I don't mind taking them, and I can face them unafraid. K? I'm done.

Risk > Reward

the real victim here is the WHEELIE...

"Wheelie" is one of those childhood words that I thought would never be used in educated, adult conversation. Kind of like "dookie".

And yet, here we are...

is there a one word adult synonym
?

Manual.

Quick everyone take this to the brakes debate thread

I thought manuals were wheelies without pedalling. is that wrong?

wheelie is an awesome word.

Yep, that's the distinction. Nose wheelies should really be called nose manuals.

so i cant find the girls on track bikes thread, so i am going to post this here.



and there you go



and a nose wheelie is a stoppie if you stop, and an endo if you keep going

one foot over the handle bar skid?

No, just being a ****.

well. that's clearly the wrong answer.

ah, so pictures of girls is the new brake debate for killing threads

We do call them nose manuals.