USAC only follows UCI equipment regulations for a 17/18, U23, and Elite fields for National Championships and any UCI sanctioned races in same fields. Never heard of enforcing UCI equipment in any other race. I also believe UCI regs apply to state record attempts. See item F from current rule book.
Exactly!
You just sound ridiculous.
At least in the US a bike only needs to be UCI compliant for UCI events or Nationals. I don’t know about other countries but I raced in France and the US as an amateur and never saw a single bike check other than a junior gear rollout.
The UCI will probably backpedal on this rule since they forgot about women and didn’t seem to consider commonly manufactured 36 and 38cm bars. Don’t buy new handlebars yet.
You brought up motor scanning, and keep saying about bikes not being checked.
You are disagreeing with yourself, it is the same concept as having a motor. Just because the bars might not be checked for EVERY race doesn’t mean its not against the rules and wouldn’t be checked if it seemed past the limit. And even if it is not checked, it is still against the rules and is still cheating!
I would like to point out I have never been to USA or North/South America. Every race I participate in has a commissaire. These UCI rules are more than just world tour cyclists or cat 3 Americans. All the races I do have a clause that they are bound by UCI rules, whether every single one is enforced 100% of the time is different.
1 Like
Which effects a lot of us IMO
British Cycling rulebook basically says all bikes used in all forms of road racing have to be UCI compliant. Again, not sure I’ve ever seen checks proactively happening at lower level racing, but have known of people being warned or relegated if race officials notice (or another rider raises a concern) that their equipment or clothing isn’t legal. Hood spacing is pretty easy to both spot and measure (unlike the previous rule which was based on the hood angle being limited to 10 degrees relative to the bars which seemed to be all but impossible to measure consistently and required a special UCI jig) so imagine if this comes into force then riders will comply with it as risk of being DQed would be pretty high.
2 Likes
I know it is stupid. Although, it used to give me a brief laugh being in a break with people on tiny gears spinning silly fast. It cheered me up trying to hang on and seeing them struggle for a different reason.
Above all else they just look crap turned in! Perhaps this is the UCI just enforcing some basic style guidance 
Agreed very few checks but have seen a number of incidents of riders being DQd or placed last due to non-conforming kit.
Really confused by the arguments in favor of the bar width rule
Do they just boil down to: probably doesn’t affect me so it’s fine
Is there anyone who thinks this increases safety (the stated purpose of this rule)? If so can you lay out how?
3 Likes
To lob another grenade into this thread, the UCI has also quietly introduced gear limits. Their limits exclude 54:10 (chiefly relevant for pros running 1x SRAM drivetrains), but not 54:11. Was that just an oversight?
ing
2 Likes
I’m not in favour of the rule. But can see the logic of having some kind of rule governing hood width as there are some pretty extreme positions and bars out there which I’m not sure are particularly safe. Just not 32cm which is far too wide, especially for smaller riders. And they need to bring data - if there’s no data linking narrower hoods positions to crashes then don’t see how they can justify making the change (and in the absence of data I’m also prepared to concede that my intuition that a very narrow position is inherently less safe might be wrong!).
Even worse than no data is fudging the data they do have and claiming that nearly all pro womens positions are compliant when that’s only looking at the 40cm drops rule and not the 32cm hoods rule which they nearly all fall foul of. Basically there’s a nugget of what might be a good idea hidden in there, but shrouded with multiple layers of UCI incompetence to the extent that almost everybody is against it!
4 Likes
But they look (IMO) very elegant when aligned with a moderately flared set of bars such that everything is eyepleasingly in line and you have a nice wide stable drops position for technical sections and descents, a medium width bar tops/base of hoods position for comfortably cruising along, and a narrower stretched out hoods position for getting aero when you need to go fast. To my eye non flared bars with straight hoods look kind of old fashioned now.
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
4 Likes
For anyone who doesn’t agree with these new rules - please contact your federation. This is what I’ve done. If riders actually contact them directly they are much more likely to pay attention. It doesn’t take many voices to have an impact.
In my case, both my wheels and handlebar position would become illegal with less than 6 months notice. I specifically bought UCI compliant wheels as listed in the PDF on their website just over a month ago. My handlebar/hood position was set up after they changed the handlebar/hoods rule just last year and now they are doing it again.
These new rules will cost thousands to replace kit, and it is just at the whim of the UCI at minimal notice. Look at how they’ve modified the handlebar and position rules in each of the last 3 years. How can you buy kit, when the rules may change again any moment?
The rules are discriminatory, poorly executed and dumb. Constantly changing equipment rules at short notice only gives those with the biggest budgets an advantage. Stability of rules evens the playing field.
3 Likes
The gearing rule makes more sense if slowing down races is what they actually want to achieve and they can calculate it so it is quantifiable. I’d probably have set it so a 50-10 passes though for Sram.
It would be nice if they stated where they want to limit speed, is it sprinters, downhills, or just the general peloton?
Have they actually collected data on where crashes are occurring?
The next things they could look at is, skinsuits, aero socks/helmets, grippier tyres, wet tyres. They could even go for banning aero frames. I am going to assume they don’t want to make the sport look old though. They want to limit speed while still keeping the optics of technology.
The big one is probably course selection - the bad crashes seems to happen at tight sprints and fast descents.
1 Like
Agreed - I think the gearing increases have enabled riders to take advantage of all the other advances on downhills, sprint finishes, drives for position ahead of narrowings etc. Would be keen for the UCI to limit these in line with your suggestion.
1 Like
I’d add:
(1) Is that the actual motivation or a pretext for something else?
(2) What is the reason that most pro cyclists use larger gears (afaik in almost all cases it’s efficiency, not speed)? (The only exceptions may be sprinters, but isn’t a cool sprint something that makes the sport attractive?)
(3) If you have identified a scenario (e. g. slowing down sprints), is that really what you want?
1 Like
That gearing rule is a huge FU to Sram. Certainly shows where the uci alliance is. This is stepping into the same level as pro soccer and f1 with the level of organizational absurdity.
1 Like
(1) Is that the actual motivation or a pretext for something else?
Not sure. Adam Hansen is part of the SafeR committee and was into bike optimisation (big rings and narrow bars etc). So it is going against what he did and was kinda famous for. I assume he is not a hypocrite and does care about safety and is just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks?
(2) What is the reason that most pro cyclists use larger gears (afaik in almost all cases it’s efficiency, not speed)? (The only exceptions may be sprinters, but isn’t a cool sprint something that makes the sport attractive?)
Efficiency is watts savings so more speed. I am a user of big rings (58 1x and 54 2x). There have been reports of using the 10 cog down hills to go extra fast and get away from those on 11 cogs. I like cool sprints but I do not want to watch sprinters careers being ruined or death. I guess if the trains delivering the springs are going slower, then the 54-11 should still be enough. Again you can calculate from the available power/cadence data
(3) If you have identified a scenario (e. g. slowing down sprints), is that really what you want?
That is for pro cyclists to decide. Also, some data on where the crashes are happening would help explain this. 40 mph in lycra is pretty fast and sketchy. For me, the less injuries then the more competition. I wanted to see healthy athletes go up against Pog as much as possible
1 Like
To me, the most obvious way to reduce speed and improve safety, if that’s the desired outcome, is to mandate specific tyres for pro races.
Have a race tyre that has super high rolling resistance, but also amazing grip and puncture protection. That would both reduce the number of crashes and the speed of the peloton in all scenarios.
(Not that I agree with the original premise that we need to slow the pros down.)
1 Like
50:10 is a bigger gear than the proposed max ratio of 54:11. Teams riding SRAM would have to ride 49:10 which is 0.185% smaller, advantage Shimano!
1 Like