IS THE ROADRACE BIKE AS GOOD AS IT GETS–OR COULD IT BE BETTER?

IIF YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED, THERE’S A LOT OF NEW AND EXCITING STUFF HAPPENING IN THE WORLD OF BICYCLES. Gravel bikes are redefining the drop-bar experience. Off-road touring bikes, or what I like to call super-gravel bikes, are becoming extremely capable of getting us off the tar and further into the wild. E-bikes are evolving at such an astonishing rate, it’s hard to imagine life without them. And mountain bikes, whose geometry rules are in the midst of a major rewrite, keep getting longer, lower, and slacker. In almost every category, cycling equipment is evolving as brands continue to experiment with and improve the machine we love so much.

Almost every category. There’s still one kind of bike that’s been virtually locked in amber for about 20 years: the halo of our sport, the road-race bike.

When you compare two top-of-the-line 56cm Cannondale road-race bikes – a CAAD3 from 1997 and a 2019 SuperSix Evo – it’s easy to see how little has changed. Their geometries are nearly identical (to the millimetre, in most measurements), the tyres are a mere 2mm wider on the newer bike (25 vs 23), and the 2019 model has just two more cogs (11 vs 9). Plus, the new tech used in the 2019 Cannondale – disc brakes, thru-axles, and a tapered steerer fork – are all borrowed from the mountain bike. The biggest ‘homegrown’ change to road-race bikes over the past two decades is that some are more aerodynamic, to an extent. And while aero does matter, the bike, compared with the rider, is just a fraction of the overall picture; so it’s hard to call that anything more than a minor design tweak.

But when you compare a 2000 Specialized Enduro mountain bike with a 2020 Enduro, the differences are way more significant. The 2020 bike has 29-inch wheels versus the 2000’s 26ers. And where the 2020 Enduro runs on a 1x12 drivetrain, the earlier model used a 3x9. Travel on the newer model is 170mm at both ends; the 2000 bike had 105mm of travel up front and 116 in the rear. And remember those geometry rules that continue to evolve? That’s evident in the 2020 bike’s wheelbase (173mm longer), seat-tube angle (8 degrees steeper), head-tube angle (5 degrees slacker), and top tube (69mm longer).

So yeah, clearly the road-race bike’s evolution has come to a comparative crawl. One reason – among others – for this monochromatic landscape is the set of equipment regulations put in place by cycling’s governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale. The UCI has the authority to regulate the equipment used in many forms of professional bicycle competition, including in the Olympics. The stated reason for the regulations is to ensure that the competition is a race among cyclists and not a race of technology. But the UCI’s rules are seemingly so restrictive that in the 20 years since the approval of the Lugano Charter – which set down the UCI’s current equipment regulations – bikes have converged into homogeneous sameness. In geometry, performance, features, even silhouette, road-race bikes

seem to be popped out of the same mould, the only difference among them being the logo on the down tube.

I’ve ridden hundreds of road-race bikes, and I can tell you the differences between those top-end models are getting narrower every year.

As a non-professional rider and non-racer, I shouldn’t care about equipment regulations that apply to only a few genetic freaks. But I have to, because they affect me too. Take UCI rule 1.3.007: “Bicycles and their accessories shall be of a type that is sold for use by anyone practising cycling as a sport. The use of equipment designed especially for the attainment of a particular performance (record or other) shall be not authorised.” In other words, all the stuff the pros use at the highest levels of our sport must be available to us amateurs. One of the unique things about road racing is that any rider can purchase the same bike the pros ride. That doesn’t happen in ▶ormula 1, MotoGP, or many other sports. But bike makers’ reliance on racing to sell their bikes, and the cost of developing new designs, mean we have fewer options and benefit less from innovative thinking that would help you and me – not the pros – better enjoy the ride.

If I thought the road-race bikes designed and sold under those restrictions delivered the best ride experience for everyday cyclists, I wouldn’t be as concerned as I am. But I don’t think they do. When I look at how much mountain bikes have changed (the UCI’s regulations for mountain bikes are far looser than they are for road bikes) and what’s happening in the land of triathlon bikes – which the UCI doesn’t regulate – I think we could be riding higher-performing and more interesting road bikes than the ones available to us now. Think more aero, crazier frame shapes, different wheel sizes.

It’s easy to call the UCI’s rules antitechnology, and it’s easy to point at bike brands’ dependence on racing as a reason for the road bike’s static evolution. Easy, because it’s generally true. But the UCI and bike brands aren’t fully to blame. We as consumers share some responsibility too. Change won’t come if we keep buying what’s put in front of us without demanding something built specifically for our needs. The bike our racing heroes ride is almost never the ideal go-fast road bike for the rest of us.

When I look at road bikes, from the highest end to the lowest, I see a lot of clones of UCI-legal race bikes. That seems unhealthy when such a tiny percentage of road cyclists race, and even fewer participate in events where the UCI rules are in place. While other forms of bikes continue to evolve – even other types within the roadbike segment, like gravel and endurance – we’re settling for the road-race bike we have because we haven’t been given the opportunity to see if it can be built better.

THE BIKE OUR RACING HEROES RIDE IS ALMOST NEVER THE IDEAL GO-FAST ROAD BIKE FOR THE REST OF US.