Trevor Ward

With science and technology playing an increasing role in bike racing, let’s get back to basics and celebrate the unadulterated athleticism of the riders

It's not about the bike – Trevor casts all that new-fangled technology to one side to celebrate the athleticism that makes the pros special

Henri Desgrange, the curmudgeonly creator of the Tour, had the right idea when he banned derailleur gears and made riders carry out their own repairs

Legend has it that Swiss-french rider Pierre Brambilla lay his bike on his bed and slept on the floor every time he’d had a bad race during his post-war career.

‘That no doubt didn’t improve his physical fitness, but his mental health came out of it restored,’ writes Paul Fournel in his collection of philosophical essays, Need For The Bike. ‘Certain racers couldn’t care less about their machines so long as it goes. They don’t even know which gears they set out with in the morning. They delegate the love of their bike to their mechanics.’

I’m definitely in this camp. I resent having to even clean my bike, so there’s no chance of it ever getting a night under my duvet. It’s not that I hate it, I just fail to see the need to anthropomorphise something that is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. I can’t get excited about some steel or carbon tubes with a few moving parts attached. For me it’s all about the rider, not the bike.

I realise that many readers will be choking on their cappuccinos reading this, but I’ve just never been able to get excited about ceramic jockey wheels or carbon bottle cages. Cycling gives me hours of pleasure and has taken me to some amazing places, but whether it was a £10,000 Pinarello Dogma F10 (in the Dolomites) or a hire bike from the Lille branch of Decathlon (on the secteurs of Paris-roubaix) is incidental to me.

It was my exertions, my suffering, my body alone that got me across the respective challenges of gradients and cobbles.

It was the man, not the machine.

You never see a double-page analysis of Roger Federer’s racquet or Ben Stokes’ bat after they’ve won a tennis match or game of cricket. Yet the bikes of Grand Tour or Classics winners receive drooling adulation, as if the riders’ suffering, sacrifices and nine-month training regimes had been largely irrelevant.

Within minutes of Mathieu van der Poel winning the Tour of Flanders in October his dad Adri had posted a picture of the winning bike, sans fils. Even allowing for ‘contractual obligations to sponsors’ it was a bizarre display of fatherly pride.

Henri Desgrange, the curmudgeonly creator of the Tour de France, had the right idea when he banned derailleur gears and made riders carry out their own repairs to keep the race all about the pure athleticism of the riders rather than any technological jiggery pokery.

He would be turning in his grave at the sight of some of the modern-day innovations that have converted today’s Worldtour into an arms race rather than a contest of physical prowess, whether it be aerodynamic ‘flaps’ on front forks, cassettes as big as dinner plates or wheel rims inspired by whale fins.

It’s not just cycling. Even running is not immune to technological ‘doping’. In December 2020 Kibiwott Kandie became the first man to run a half marathon in under 58 minutes, and his achievement was put down to his choice of shoes and their ‘carbon-infused rods that mimicked the metatarsal bones of the foot’ rather than the Kenyan’s natural ability.

Graeme Obree, who famously broke the Hour record on a bike made from washing machine parts and in a position so contorted and radical it was eventually banned by the UCI, could claim to have a foot in both camps of the man vs machine argument.

In his training manual, The Obree Way, he recommends constantly applying lubrication to the chain while you are riding your bike. There is a Scottish company that will sell you the device for such a purpose for £149.95. It claims a ‘saving of 12 watts’ compared to ‘eight for a skinsuit and 2.4 for ceramic jockey wheels’.

Science is a wonderful thing, but I’d rather its resources were used to save lives than watts. Sport should be pure and gladiatorial, a contest of skill and strength on a level playing field.

We should, in fact, follow the example set by a unique race in Holland – the national headwind cycling championship, or Tegenwindfietsen.

Usually held at this time of year to coincide with a storm blowing in off the North Sea, the race has one crucial requirement. Held as a TT, every competitor rides the same machine – a sit-up-and-beg Gazelle city bike unadorned by all those scientific and technological innovations that Pierre Brambilla probably dreamed of as he tossed and turned on his bedroom floor.