Showing posts with label bicycling equipment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bicycling equipment. Show all posts

25 January 2015

Check Your Pressure!

I took Physics in my junior year of high school.  That was, oh, let's say some time before the first Star Wars movie came out. So, I admit that I've forgotten much of what I learned that year, and that some of the basic tenets of that branch of science have changed since then.

But I'm pretty good at detecting male ungulate excrement, if I do say so myself.  And I've been told I have a sense of humor.  (I don't know how anybody could think that!)  So, very few things uttered by famous people have made me laugh as much as New England Patriots' coach Bill Belichick's explanation of the under-inflated footballs used in the American Football Conference's championship game.  

 Inflate a bicycle tire

Now, in all fairness, the pressure--or, more precisely,lack thereof--in the footballs probably had little or no outcome on the effect of the game, which the Patriots won in a rout.  The Pats--and I say this as someone who isn't a fan--were clearly the better team in that game.

Still, you have to wonder what Belichick would be doing if he weren't a football coach.  Can you imagine him as a science teacher?  Or a minister?  A lawyer, perhaps:  He might win cases just by confusing people.  He's the only person I've ever seen who can channel Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon at the same time.

I'm mentioning him, and the "Deflate-gate" "scandal" because it got me to thinking about how many controversies there have been in cycling over doctored equipment.  While the two-wheeled sport has not been without such incidents, given bicycle racing's 130-year (give or take) history and the number of events held during that time, there actually have been relatively few controversies about equipment.

Some might argue that there seem to be few such scandals in cycling because they're overshadowed by doping.  Fair enough:  a Google search of "bicycle racing scandals" turns up a lot of entries about substance abuse--and, of course, Lance.  However, I think that the presence of drugs in cycling might now be overstated:  The incidents of doping attributed to Lance (and some of his peers) were a decade in the past by the time he had that now-famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view)  interview with Oprah.  

Still, whether or not you accept that cycling isn't as "dirty" as has been alleged (I think that it's a "cleaner" sport than it was, say, a decade or two ago.), you have to admit that drug scandals aren't the reason why we don't hear more about scandals involving doctored equipment.  There are a couple of good reasons for this.


One is that cycling's governing bodies have, for the most part, fairly stringent regulations about equipment.  For example, the Union Cycliste International decrees that no bike ridden in a road race can weigh less than 6.8 kg (14.99 pounds).  Some have argued that this weight limit is too high, given today's technology.  But I believe that most people--whether they are racers, fans, coaches or the sport's administrators--agree that there should be a "floor" for bike weight, whatever it is.  After all, I don't think anyone wants to see a sport in which technology matters more than the physical conditioning or tactics.  At least, I wouldn't want to see such a sport.

The Nihon Jitensha Shinkokai is another governing body that tightly regulates equipment used in bike races.  The NJS, which oversees keirin track racing in Japan does not allow riders to use bikes or components that it hasn't approved.  What's interesting is that NJS-approved equipment isn't always the lightest available.  However, it stands up to the stress and abuse of track racing and the training involved in it.  NJS officials explain that such regulations help to ensure the safety of the riders as well as the integrity of the sport, on which considerable sums of money are wagered in Japan.

What I've long found interesting is that, even in the absence of regulations, racers ride remarkably similar equipment.  So, while the UCI has a weight limit, it doesn't specify which components or frames can or can't be used.  Even so, nearly all of the riders are spinning wheels made by the same three or four manufacturers and are pumping on cranks and shifting gears made by the about the same number of companies.  Still, the equipment used in today's peloton is far more diverse than it was in the days of Eddy Mercx, when nearly all of the European pros were riding bikes equipped with Campagnolo components.

One reason for such uniformity in equipment is, of course, that Campy was making the most reliable stuff available at the time, and nobody wants to lose a race because of equipment failure.  At the same time Campagnolo had a near-monopoly on the equipment preferences of the European peloton, Japanese racers--even greater in number than their European counterparts--were using SunTour derailleurs.  

So, in brief, most racers and coaches have figured out that there's little, if any, benefit to using altered or unorthodox equipment.  Still, they should check their tire pressure! ;-)

31 January 2013

What They Didn't Have

From Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid

More than three decades ago, Hal Ruzal, the Mercian maven and mechanic par excellence of Bicycle Habitat, rode his bicycle across the United States for the first (!) time.  

A friend who accompanied him had several flats and was down to his last inner tubes when they were in Kansas.   Now, I've never been to Kansas, but I don't imagine that, even today, it's as easy to find some bike items there as it is in, say, Portland, Minneapolis or Boston.  However, in those days, according to Hal, "there wasn't a single Presta valve tube in the entire state of Kansas."

He can tell a good story, but I don't think he was exaggerating. I don't think the very first shop in which I worked--in New Jersey--had Presta valve tubes, either. For that matter, I wouldn't be surprised to know that most shops in the Garden State circa 1975 didn't have them.


If they didn't have Presta valves,  it meant they didn't have sew-up tires, and probably didn't have the high-pressure clinchers (like the Michelin Elan) that were just starting to become available around then--or the new rims Mavic and Rigida were making for use with them.  

If you were in a rural area, it could even be difficult to find things like toe clips and straps. (The only clipless pedal available then was the Cinelli M-71, a.k.a. "The Suicide Pedal.) Around that time, John Rakowski, who rode his bicycle around the world, ordered the Karrimor panniers and handlebar bags he used directly from the manufacturer in England:  Very few shops carried good touring gear, and supplies were sporadic, to put it mildly.

Those times were probably the heyday of mail-order shops.  Sometimes the shops' proprietors (who were almost invariably the buyers, if their wives weren't) didn't even know where to find high-quality bike items.  Or, if they could find a source, the prices would be exorbitant because they were ordering only one, and paying the full shipping costs.

The lightest bike sold in the first shop in which I worked was the Raleigh Super Course.  

Raleigh Super Course, in the 1975 catalogue.

It was a pretty bike, I thought, especially in that shade of candy-apple red. (The green wasn't bad, either.)  But I would soon find myself riding a bike that, in almost every way, exceeded that one.  I didn't get it in that first shop in which I worked.  I couldn't have.