Classic Style Bikes for TT's: Cut Back on Crashes

[gntlmn]

It almost makes you grimace watching these guys during the prologue going down so easily on these high tech TT machines. They are so stiff that they are hard to manuever at high speed around the corners. If they went back to classic style bikes, they would cut way back on the accidents. And the time trial is relative anyway. If everyone ends up going just a little bit slower, the result in the end will be much the same anyway, and it might save some major injuries. It would be similar to rolling back the clock in the One Hour Record to the classic Eddy Merckx style bike instead of the almost HPV styles that they were going toward.

 

[Jakebrake]

Did you get a chance to eyeball Hamilton's stemless wonder?

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2004/tour04/tech/?id=tyler_tt

 

[gntlmn]

Originally posted by Jakebrake
Did you get a chance to eyeball Hamilton's stemless wonder?

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2004/tour04/tech/?id=tyler_tt

It's pretty hard to see exactly how that bike is put together with the black background and black frame. It's a neat looking bike.

Did you see the Hamilton footage as he was approaching the finish line? It was a from the finish line angle, and the commentator said that Tyler has about one of the most unorthodox styles of time trialing, but still gets very good results. He sure was gyrating around on that bike. It wasn't wobbling, but he sure was. Actually, I thought Tyler would do better in the prologue. He's a good time trialist.

We'll see how he does in the mountains where he also shines.

 

[Tuschinski]

Originally posted by gntlmn
It almost makes you grimace watching these guys during the prologue going down so easily on these high tech TT machines. They are so stiff that they are hard to manuever at high speed around the corners. If they went back to classic style bikes, they would cut way back on the accidents. And the time trial is relative anyway. If everyone ends up going just a little bit slower, the result in the end will be much the same anyway, and it might save some major injuries. It would be similar to rolling back the clock in the One Hour Record to the classic Eddy Merckx style bike instead of the almost HPV styles that they were going toward.

I am not sure it is the frame or even the position that is the problem. If they grip the handlebars (so not the triathlon bar) the position is roughly that of being under in the drops of a normal handlebar. The stiffness of the frame shouldn't be a problem, considering the normal oversized frames ALU and Carbon Monocoques are extremely stiff as well. I would actually be surprised if the average stiffness of the TT bike is higher as that of a normal oversized racer.

I think that there are other problems:

1. Speed... it's as easy as that, they just take too much risks, no bike can change that.
2. The high rimmed wheels are much more susceptible to wind. Discwheels are a lot worse.

Truth is that the Liege-prologue was a dog. It was windy, wet at times, there were cobbled streets... UGH. To me it was no surprise that surprise that there were crashes