Cycling is a pretty archaic sport. The bicycle itself has been around since the 1800’s, allowing for a bit of leeway with what ‘bicycle’ describes. The UCI does its best, mostly through heavy handed banning of things out of the ordinary, to keep the evolution of the racing bicycle at a darwinian pace.
With such slow changes to the rules governing the form of the racing bicycle, it probably hasn’t escaped your notice that the majority of aero bikes in recent years all look near-identical. Recent relaxation in the rules on tube depth has created some divergence, but given enough time, wind tunnel testing, and computational fluid dynamics and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that we could see this latest crop of one-race-bike bikes coalesce around a final form.
While I doubt that this is a proposal that the UCI will countenance for a second, I think there’s a lot we could gain, both as a sport and as consumers, if the WorldTour peloton raced on a class of bikes that don’t have to be commercially available. A Formula 1 style, top tier of machines, with rules governing their form changing every few years.
The Formula 1 system
Every year the technical regulations governing Formula 1 cars change, and every year there is a media frenzy around how the teams are going to adapt their machines to comply with the regulations. There are endless YouTube videos from armchair engineers all the way through to coverage in the sports pages of national newspapers. More infrequently there are major changes, new engine requirements and the like, that stir the pot and drive innovation.
To many people, myself included it must be said, the racing in Formula 1 is a little dull, but the constant technical churn is fascinating.
It would be cool
This is perhaps the most major selling point – It’d just be really cool to see. Motorsport fans lust after the machines confined to the upper echelons of the sport, likely in a way they wouldn’t if they could, with enough cash, also drive the very same machines to the supermarket to pick up eggs and milk.
Sailors, too, look on in awe at the machines of the Americas Cup, and the fact that they…
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