Quoted message said:I prefer to have each team qualify a bicycle to be used for all its
members and no other bicycle can be substituted for special events
(TT, hill climb, etc). This is what you propose, I presume. The
bicycle that emerges from such a rule might look substantially
different from what we see today.The reason this doesn't occur is that bicycle manufacturers sponsor
the event and use it to market their special equipment. It might be
different if sponsors from the bicycle industry be banned, leaving it
to food, drink, phone companies, computers, and the like.
Kind of an inside-out way of looking at it. The reality (from my perspective
as an insider of sorts at Trek) is that the team pushes the bike company
very, very hard. The back story to the new Madone is amazing, but can't
probably be told for a little while yet (as it involves politics and
resources between the team and Trek).
The days of the racer who's happy to ride on whatever he's given are, for
the most part, gone. Back in the day it was just the top couple of guys
(sometimes only one) on a team that got the cool stuff. There are still some
riders who just don't care... "Put me on a bike, point me in the right
direction and I'll do my job." But competition among the riders themselves,
competition for a decent contract for the next year... that, too, is a force
pushing the individual rider's desire to have the best-possible equipment.
I don't think Trek really cares that much about making TT bikes from a
business standpoint (there's very little money in them, and way too much
effort). Trek cares about having their name shown on TV, in newspapers, and
magazine covers. It doesn't matter what type of bike it is. They're going to
make lots more money selling standard road bikes to a whole lot of people
than they will anything else. And the average person, seeing a photo of a TT
bike, doesn't have any better feeling about buying a Trek than he or she
would seeing a photo of that same athlete on a standard road bike. Could
even be the opposite.
--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com
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Quoted message said:Dan Connelly said:Quoted message said:> No. What happened was that the early Tours were brutal endurance
> tests, often with riders finishing an excruciating 300+ km stage
> alone, or in small groups, minutes or hours apart. I doubt that
> there would be much interest in such an event now. It would be
> amusing, though, to return to the practice of requiring riders to
> make their own field repairs, including changing flats.Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Does that include setting bones and carbon fiber repairs?
Quoted message said:It would be good seeing the riders use equipment that was actually
designed to last. It would obsolete the silly weight rule.Quoted message said:At the least, require the riders to use the same equipment in every
stage, time trials included. The bike-du-jour syndrome is a bit
like Adventure Racing: maximize the number of toys.I prefer to have each team qualify a bicycle to be used for all its
members and no other bicycle can be substituted for special events
(TT, hill climb, etc). This is what you propose, I presume. The
bicycle that emerges from such a rule might look substantially
different from what we see today.The reason this doesn't occur is that bicycle manufacturers sponsor
the event and use it to market their special equipment. It might be
different if sponsors from the bicycle industry be banned, leaving it
to food, drink, phone companies, computers, and the like.The length of the race is probably also a result of multi-media
attention span. I'm sure this has been commercially researched.Jobst Brandt