The cycling industry has a problem, one that you may have noticed from time to time but maybe turned a blind eye to. “It doesn’t really affect me, so I’ll just let it go”, you think to yourself. I’m afraid to say that attitude is only serving, on a collective basis, to exacerbate the issue. What is the issue then, that’s so pressing it demands a full investigative piece? Well, someone, somewhere is stealing all the vowels.
Amongst the throng of new releases we get exposed to a greater and greater frequency of launches are ever more devoid of those five key letters (six, if you’re counting Y) that really do aid in guiding the correct pronunciation. Without them, I’d just be Wllm Jns, writing for Cyclngnws. When did this epidemic of vowel theft begin, and moreover what can we do to slow its spread and ultimately bring it to a halt?
It all started with Wahoo
No company has been so completely ransacked of its vowels as Wahoo, as if to compound the financial difficulties the company has been facing over recent years.
We can view the American smart fitness brand as the first victim of an industry-wide spree. The scale of the devastation is reflected across the whole product line: All of its bike computers, the Elemnt range, are affected, along with the entire line of both smart trainers, exercise bikes, and accessories thanks to the Kickr moniker being truncated prematurely. Moreover, the Powrlink pedals and Tickr heart rate monitor have been afflicted. It seems the only products to have been left untouched are the speed and cadence sensors, though for how long we can’t say, as “Cdnc” is clearly going to be low-hanging fruit, but I think we can all rest assured that “speed” is safe as “Sped” looks daft, and “Spd” would likely incur some legal ramifications with Shimano.
An industry wide issue
We need to treat Wahoo as a cautionary example of how severe the theft of vowels can get if a company is not defended with sufficient robustness. It’s far from a lone cnry in a coalmine, however. Following extensive investigations, Cyclingnews is sad to report the following brands and product lines have been affected, over and above what we see at Wahoo:
- Ridley, with it’s Grifn bike
- The Trackr gravel race
- Lotto-Dstny
- Rab, with its new Cndr bikepacking range
- Canyon, with its Grizl bike and its…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…