bobbyOCR said:Shimano works great.
SRAM works great.
Campy works great.
end of argument.
Campybob, shut up please. I understand where you are coming from, but no-one ever mentioned adding weight to their bikes. The local scientist members (LSMs) continuously say that taking a small amount of weight (<500g) off your bike won't really make a big difference in performance. Just because they said that, you keep saying 'hey, why don't we add weight to our bikes instead, because that's what you're saying'. No its not. Why add weight to your bike? No-one said lightening your bike wouldn't make a performance difference. It'll just be really small. Really, really small. All of this is an effort to combat the utter ******** poured out by people about a 100g lighter whatever making a massive difference. The difference may be 0.1km/h, unless perceived advantage has altered that. If you go on a ride with bike X with 105 and the same bike with Ultegra, inputting the identical power levels in identical conditions, the difference will be insignificant.
Now, the reason we buy light stuff is it sells. Marketig influences everyone and we buy it, so they make it. Also, you can't compare two people, but you can compare their bikes. Bodies are different, bikes, essentially, are bikes.
And racing is a stupid example. Races contain so many friggin variables. You only need to be 0.00000000000000001km/h faster average than your opponent to win. This difference could be anything. tactics, draft, smooth piece of road, gust of wind, or training. If someone wins a race by a huge margin in a breakaway, they could do the same thing on a bike with slightly heavier components.
Don't even mention pro riders because we aren't paid to ride ****.
For an Aussie, you're alright. And yer right about the different factors deciding who wins a race. Even in time trials, that's the case. It's likely that about the only time in recent history that equipment won a race was when LeMond beat Fignon in that TdF ending TT.
Even the guys on BMCs are able to win now and again despite their extreme equipment disadvantage.