Hookless or not?

Equipment
351

Zipp said;

With respect to the incident involving Thomas de Gendt, Lotto/Dstny team management has confirmed the rider hit an object in the road

It was their assessment that the nature of the impact would have caused severe damage to the tire and rim regardless of the rim design

Vittoria said;

The intensity of the impact caused the rim/wheel to break in a manner that prevented the tyre from staying securely in place

Any premise that these three entities are conspiring to lie about a safety concern is preposterous. This is the closest we have to a concrete verdict at the moment and everything else is baseless speculation.

352

What if the rim broke only because the tire came off and the tire came off only because the rim was hookless (tire too small and/or over inflated and all that)?

353

So we are just ignoring the fact that de Gendt says he didn’t hit anything then?

Got it.

354

Stop lol :joy:.

ETRTO is a massive conglomeration of for profit bike part manufacturers, not the World Health organization man lol.

You’ll excuse me if I take their recommendations with a healthy bucketful of salt.

355

Did he? Your fabrications are becoming embarrassing

And if someone has the images. I would like to know what i hit with my front wheel.

356

Better save some of that salt for the other org too

357

Too many “what-if” scenarios.

I am/was not going towards this path. My point is: that there will be blow-outs, period. If they happened AFTER an incident such as a broken rim, I don’t think it should be dumped into the hookless account.

358

Hold up. That’s exactly why ETRTO have an interest in allowing hookless as an approved design. It’s the rim manufactures engineers that are pushing hookless to reduce their manufacturing costs. So a group of rim manufacturers which have financial incentive to encourage hookless use are the ones saying don’t go above 72.5 psi.

359

Holy hell…could you be any more wrong if you tried?

Bikes are just a small piece of what ETRTO does…they standards for all tires across the EU.

And if they were a “massive conglomeration of for profit bike part manufacturers”, why don’t Zipp and ENVE agree with their standards?

360

I suggest you check out Ronan McLaughlin’s reporting on this issue.

361

My point here is that this is not a single altruistic entity coming up with these numbers for the benefit of humanity. There are, I’m sure, a whole list of differing motives behind the reason for the recommendations existing at all, as well as the numbers themselves.

I sincerely doubt these values were ever meant to be taken as more than rough guidelines.

362

De Gendt himself is asking for pictures of what he hit.

Why would you take anyone else’s word, much less someone who has gained vast exposure in making negative claims about hookless off the back of this incident?

363

Some people are taking that comment as a bit of sarcasm, veiled skepticism or something similar from what I have read. Essentially he could be understood to be questioning the claims he hit an object, but rather had a blowout without a triggering impact (in conflict with the claims of others that he seemingly could/would know better than anyone else).

364

Your hyperbole aside, that is exactly what ETRTO attempts to do…set standards that are safe and reliable for all pneumatic tires.

Your previous statement was incredibly false and completely misrepresents what ETRTO is as an organization.

365

As I said…

366

For quick access:

367

.He posted that on the day

The Vittoria statement came 5 days later…

368

There’s no conspiracy here. Of course there’s motives or nobody would bother doing the work. But a motive in itself does not imply anything bad.

Here’s the usual motives for engineering standards:

  • Establish minimum requirements for parts to be compatible with each other. Results in more consumer confidence and more sales
  • Ensure safety. Reduces lawsuits by having met industry standard requirements
  • Save everybody some cost on basic engineering studies and risk assessments that aren’t a competitive advantage

However, sometimes the industry as a group still fails to understand all the issues and meeting the goals isn’t achieved.

Zipp and others purposely aren’t comparing with the standards. The burden of proof on safety is higher for them than it is for ETRTO

369

I have not followed this closely, but thought that the team made a claim the same day, perhaps ahead of the tweet? I have not found or reconstructed a hard timeline here, but believe this is all more fuzzy than clear in many ways.

370

I’ve followed it closely.

The first I saw any claim that he hit something was from Vittoria.

The speculation was rife before that point, mostly based on that EC article which its self is full of inaccuracies.