Bear in mind that I write this while having my coffee on a morning when a significant task on hand for the day is to keep testing the current Range disc wheel pre-production rim. Our product lineup is a reflection (we hope) of what people want to buy, and not what we are "pushing." You're absolutely kidding yourself if you think we have the market presence to push. About the furthest we can go with pushing is to encourage people to try tubeless (I've said it a million times, I'm done with tubes. I've also said a million times that it might not be for you). So we have a dog in the disc fight, but we also have a dog in the not-disc fight (if you race with rim brakes and don't use Rails, it's your fault). In that aspect of the business, we are agnostic and happy to try and supply the best solution for whatever path people wish to pursue.
Long preamble, huh? Okay, so Francisco Ventoso got his leg sliced into pretty badly in a near-accident on Sunday at Paris-Roubaix. The apparent (and really we've got no reason to doubt it) implement of this cut was a disc rotor. As a result, the use of disc brakes in the pro peloton has been suspended. You can't use discs in UCI pro races until further notice.
This highlights two situations that I'd like to briefly explore. The first is best introduced by a quote from an article that Caley Fretz posted on VeloNews yesterday:
“We’re always going to follow demand,” Yu says. “In the past it was, ‘You race on it on Sunday and sell it on Monday.’ But nowadays more people are into experience and adventure. So the goal now is producing a bike that is optimal for the job. Sometimes that’s racing. More and more often it’s not.”
The "Yu" in question is Chris Yu, an aerodynamicist who works at Specialized. The sentiment he expresses - that riders take their equipment cues less and less from what pros race on - is something with which we absolutely agree. Whether it's backlash from years and years and years (and years) of doping, or just that the UCI can't respond to things as quickly as the market wants what it wants, or something else, I can't say. The UCI has a tough-ish job there, I'm not calling them a lumbering beast though they might be that - I really don't know. My point is that when you're trying to reconcile the needs and wants of the many-headed Hydra that is pro racing, you have to consider more than any individual has to worry about for himself. And when I say "himself" I mean a gender neutral "him." We love and respect women here at November Bicycles. Seriously.
The other issue is highlighted (highlit?) by a commenter someplace on the internet, who writes about this incident:
It's time for a union and for the UCI to do its job and resist industry profit pressures.
The problem with this, kind sir, is that industry profit pressures are the reason that pro road racing currently exists. Cannondale, Lampre-Merida, BMC, Giant-Alpecin, Trek Segafredo - all teams sponsored primarily by the industry. Remove the endemic sponsors, even the ones that aren't top-line team name sponsors, and pro racing ends tomorrow. The sport has failed to execute a revenue model that allows it to exist without being little more than a promotional vehicle for the products used within the sport.
This is the issue that I have whenever discussions of minimum rider salaries or whatever arise. There's no economic justification for them. The economics of pro cycling are more or less the economics of patronage.
Don't misunderstand me, though I dislike pro sports in general, I enjoy watching bike races. After I raced Sunday, I watched a replay of P-R with friends and though it was great. And as regards said race, a guy crashed mere inches from me when he failed to pay attention at a moment when he should have been paying attention, but was futzing with his bottle instead. Should bottles be banned? But the other channel was showing The Masters. Want to talk about a legitimate economic model?
9 comments
I am picking up a new carbon road bike this weekend. It will use caliper brakes instead of the disc brake option that the manufacturer offers (Pinarello). The bike will have etap shifting, a quark power meter and a modern carbon frame. My reasons for not getting disc brakes relate to weight, aerodynamics and their relative newness in road cycling. I suspect that they have a lot of development potential and some standardization ahead of them. Road wheels will probably advance as disc brakes advance. In the mean time, I will ride a bike that stops as well as I can ride it to a safe stop without discs. Carbon brake tracks are getting better and I don't ride much in the rain or on mountains. Next time I may choose disc brakes, but not this time. After seeing the photos from the P-R injuries, I was even happier that I didn't check the disc brake option bills.
As always, a refreshing and balanced look at the subtext of [one of] the problems facing pro cycling! Well done.I'm definitely a fan of disc brakes. For my riding (and that does include some road racing), they're perfect. I can appreciate, especially on a crash-full race like P-R, that they add danger. Suspending them seems like the right thing to do right now. Maybe they will never make sense in professional road cycling. (I'm grateful that I can race with them as an amateur so I don't have to own a separate road bike just for racing.) And I agree with Ryan that this is an engineering problem; just make them "not sharp" or cover them.The sentiment that they are a solution in search of a problem seems to apply to pretty much any of the recent advancements in cycling technology. Did we need electronic shifting? Or even need disc brakes in mountain biking or cyclocross? No, but no one actually wants to go back to rim brakes there. Discs on the road are an evolution, not a revolution. Consistent braking in all weather is something that is great for the average cyclist (and probably for a lot of pros, in the right context). Add to that consistent braking with carbon rims, and you have something that really differentiates it. Sure, if you're happily riding rims with alloy brake tracks and using a higher-end groupset discs aren't going to change your world.But I can't think of a compelling reason the average cyclist would choose rim brakes on a new, unencumbered bike purchase — assuming that a disc-brake model was available at the same price point. In addition to the braking performance, the flexibility in rim widths (and switching wheelsets w/o adjusting calipers) is a huge plus for me.
@Hans, not just was it probably a freak accident, it has thus far had no verifiable evidence to show the wound occurred from a disc brake. Certainly safety should be addressed, but cancelling the 'test' is one of the dumber things the UCI has done (which is a high bar there…)GCN did a video on disc brake safety that was quite telling.
@Randall, I think the bigger factor for not choosing disc brakes on your Pinarello would have been the fact that etap doesn't support discs yet. And if you're looking at spending that kind of money for a bike, I'd definitely be wanting etap!I think if you ask the folks that have ridden discs for years on mtb or cross (or even road), you wont' find any that have sliced their legs open, because discs haven't been ridden in bike races like Paris Roubaix. So from a personal safety perspective for the cyclist riding gran fondos, etc. I would suggest discs are the far safer option. (No heat buildup on carbon rims. No risk of not stopping due to a wet rim. Superior brake modulation to avoid locking up a wheel.)And in many ways it was probably a freak accident; it could have just as easily been the big ring or someone losing a finger to a bladed spoke in a spinning wheel. It's too bad it happened, but making discs safer for those types of situations will of course help prevent the possibility of similar (if even-more-unlikely) accidents for other disc brake users.