> << Bart Wellens who just became World cyclo-cross champion has his brake
> levers in an "interesting" position. See the following:
>
>
http://tinyurl.com/23agl
>
>
http://tinyurl.com/2e8j9
>
> Note in the sprint (which he won and is conducted on an asphalt road) that he positions his hands
> on the tops rather than the drops. Maybe this shows how much bike fit is really an individual
> choice and even the top pros discard the general accepted rules of thumb when reuired
> ! >><BR><BR>
Peter Chisholm
> See this a lot in the peloton, I think due to not ideal bike fits where they have to rotate the
> bars up to be able to reach the controls. Perhaps to long top tubes or stems...
Or too low...
Handlebar angle/lever position goes through changes in fashion, like many other things.
The position shown would not have been unusual 40 years ago. It used to be the norm for the ends of
the bars to point more or less toward the rear hub. This never went out of style in the touring
world, but racers did popularize the fashion of running the bottoms of the bars level.
I think some of this has to do with brakes, and specifically older sidepulls. These brakes have poor
ergonomics when used from atop the hoods, so if you wanted to actually stop, you needed to get down
on the drops. The braking from the hoods was adeqate for keeping your station in the peloton, or
slowing down a bit entering a turn, but not for serious stopping.
Modern "aero" brake levers changed that, partly because of reduced cable friction, and mostly
because of repositioning of the brake lever pivot farther forward. This change in the internal
geometry made the brakes truly effective even from the hoods. The move to dual-pivot calipers
improved the situation even more.
With good braking now available from the hoods, the rider could spend more time in that position.
This in turn made a lower, faster bar poition tolerable, since one didn't need to spend so much time
in the drops.
The trend toward tilting the bars up/raising the controls does have its limits. If carried to
excess, it can make the brakes inaccessible from the drops.
I fooled around with handlebar angle a lot back in the '60s and found another limit... for a while I
was running with a higher than normal tilt, and it took a while for me to associate this with the
mysterious bruises I was getting on top of my lower forearms. Turns out, when I would ride in the
drops, my arms were incontact with the corners of the tops, and road vibration was causing the
bruising. A slight lowering of the bar angle fixed the problem.
Sheldon "Multi Position" Brown +--------------------------------------------------------+
| Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have | legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy" is
| the most | amazing--with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" | fighting it out for second place.
| | --Robert A. Heinlein |
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