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Technology is an integral part of cycling, just as it is in motorsport. There are some one-design motorsport racing classes, but they are far from the most popu

Technology is an integral part of cycling, just as it is in motorsport. There are some one-design motorsport racing classes, but they are far from the most popular. Fans like to see innovation, we like to coo over the beautiful new machinery on display. Some of the greatest moments in cycling are directly related to technical progress, most obviously the Obree/Boardman battle for the hour record. On one side a professional champion with a million pound superbike, on the other an unknown amateur with a bike he built himself. Many fans complain that the current regulations are too conservative and provide too little opportunity for technical innovation. Cycle racing exists in a symbiotic relationship with cycle manufacturing. Race wins sell bikes, bike sales fund race wins. Cut the manufacturers out of the sport and they take a huge chunk of sponsorship with them.

dclowd9901 11y ago
If technology is integral, then why ban motors at all? Small motors and powerful compact energy supplies are technological advancements.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jdietrich 11y ago
  It's a balance between man and machine, between tradition and progress. F1 racing cars would be faster if they replaced the driver with a computer. The fans want to see the skills of the driver tested, so the sport bans common driver aids like traction control and anti-lock brakes. Cycling with motors isn't cycling, it's motorcycling. Allowing motors would change the sport in an undesirable and irrevocable manner. In cycling, technological progress is governed by the Lugano Charter. Technology is an intrinsic part of the sport, but it is not allowed to play a dominant role. http://oldsite.uci.ch/imgarchive/Road/Equipment/The%20Lugano%20charter.pdf http://oldsite.uci.ch/imgarchive/Road/Equipment/The%20Lugano...
  - bigiain 11y ago
    Interestingly though - those now-banned-in-F1 driver aids are all over showroom floors and making regular cars safer. (as are older technologies initially developed in top level racing - disk brakes, fuel injection, radial tires, etc...) Racing in all it's forms is nearly always conducted under some entirely arbitrary artificial constraints (even when the rules don't enforce it, money ends up taking the same place). Sometimes those constraints are "we'll sell more cars if they all look a little bit like Fords or Chevys", sometimes they're more like "we've got home-team advantage, so we'll make the rules say you've got to sail your America's Cup contender to Newport to compete, even if you come from Europe/New Zealand instead of Rhode Island...". Sometimes the constrains are "these new 4WD supercharged Group B Rally Cars are killing too many people, lets stop racing anything that fast thru the trees - lets race showroom floor shopping trolly hatchbacks instead..." Keep in mind that "Cycling with motors" isn't motorcycle racing either - in motorcycle racing there's engine capacity limits, number of cylinders, number of gear ratio limits, minimum weights, restrictions on brake materials, even things like limits on the number of motors used for a season and work allowed to be done on motors between races, and MotoGP are now "standardising" the engine management electronics/software as well... WorldSBK have homologation rules, where you need to sell a certain number of your racing motorcycle to the general public as road bikes to be allowed to race (modified) version in the race series. (I'm currently riding round a two stroke 125 Cagiva Mito that's a roadgoing version of the now banned/superseded 125GP bikes... These day's you've got no choice but to compete on a 250cc four stroke in that race series/class. In the past there were 8 cylinder bikes, and bikes with 16 speed gearboxes - all just history/legends now...) A lot of "the balance" seems to end up being about money - either to stop the guy with the deepest pockets from wining everything (who'd want to go sail boat racing against Larry Ellison without some rules about how much he can spend?), or to make sure the sponsors keep pouring money into "the sport" (how many F1 rules do you suppose there are relating to drivers meeting corporate and sponsor hospitality and media requirements, rather than technical regulations about what you're allowed to race on the track?)
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > Technology is an intrinsic part of the sport, but it is not allowed to play a dominant role. I can't make any sense of this. Any bicycle is 100% a product of technology. I can't think of anything that plays a more dominant role in bicycle racing than... bicycles.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  Because motorcycle racing is an entirely different sport.
- harlanlewis 11y ago
  It's hard to disagree from my own perspective of a commuting cyclist who would like to see racing drive cycling advancement in ways that trickle down to affordably solving the last mile(s) problem for the human race, but allowing more than a single human as the source of power would simply transform the sport into something else. It's not necessarily better or worse, but using a motor is a fundamentally different activity and begs all sorts of arbitrary dimensions/mass/power restrictions or else it turns into a motorcycle race. There might not be a more efficient animal than a human on a bicycle, but we don't hold a candle to a Ducati.
  - greggman 11y ago
    What about a flywheel? Probably a net negative. What about a motor with no battery. You pedal to power it? Just wondering what the limit of "human powered" is
    - paulmd 11y ago
      A clutched flywheel would probably be an advantage in many kinds of terrain. Imagine being able to spin up the flywheel from pedalling or gravity (geared) while going downhill, and then when you hit an uphill section you kick in the gear and pedal easy. It would essentially turn most tracks into "flat" tracks.
      - nradov 11y ago
        No the extra weight of a flywheel plus motor/generator would far outweigh any small advantage. The energy density is just too low for any flywheel small enough to fit on a bike. And the gyroscopic effects would mess with handling.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        Bikes already have two really large flywheels.
        11y ago
- bigiain 11y ago
  Why ban steroids? Why ban amphetamines? Whyban surgical modification? Why ban genetic engineering? Why ban motorised exo skeletons and nano technology? (I just read a great short story along these lines called ""Slipping" by Lauren Brookes - from the EFF'S PWNING TOMORROW short fiction anthology...)
  - paulmd 11y ago
    The same question applies to all of those. If we allow technological enhancements, why is one enhancement too far? You couldn't run the course as fast as you can cycle it, after all. The same argument applies to all those other things - if we allow them then the playing field needs to stay absolutely level otherwise the person who can afford the strongest drugs, the newest gene-splicing, and the most efficient exoskeleton wins. It's either about the athletic competition or it's not. If it's about the athletic condition, then the impact of technological factors should be minimized.
    - zo1 11y ago
      It's already about which country/team/city can spend the most money scouting the best talent, or poaching them from ever-expanding pools. Then there's the matter of paying the most for the best coaches, best data analytics to optimize the bio performance of the human individual, etc. I'd argue that you can't really say that money is the reason for not include or limiting technology. If it's about a level playing field, then money should be the first thing to remove. How about a random sampling of a country/city's population? Have them compete against each-other. Otherwise, it'll always be about money as it's integral to sport.
    - rhizome 11y ago
      Then it'll be like, "why can I only have two wheels?" Bicycle racing, whose equipment is required to have only one source of power, a certain minimum weight, and no disc brakes (and maybe a couple others) is probably one of the less-constrained pro sports.
      - bigiain 11y ago
- tehwalrus 11y ago
  It crosses the border between using human muscles' energy output (and optimising the mechanical efficiency of that) and using some other energy source. Which is a fairly clear barrier for anyone to understand.
tzs 11y ago
How about something in between? A rider and a manufacturer can work together to design a new bike for that rider, but for actual races the manufacturer has to build an instance of that bike under supervision of race officials and turn it over to them, and it is that instance that the rider must use in the race. Once the bike is turned over to race officials, no one is allowed unsupervised access. That allows innovation, while making it much harder for a rider and team to cheat.
- StephenConnell 11y ago
  Wouldn't that be more work than just inspecting the bikes?
- hinkley 11y ago
  Those bikes tend to get stripped down every day. Some of the frame designs have at times been rated for less than 10k miles, meaning they wear out at some point, possibly before the end of the race. For instance a commercial aluminum frame is overbuilt so that it doesn't vibrate itself to pieces, but if you are going to get a new one in a week why bother?
- usrusr 11y ago
  Frames are OTS products under current UCI regulations. But fitting that frame to the rider involves a lot of individual tweaking by the team mechanic, so you can't really lock them down ahead of time. But with IR cameras and a reasonable identification system directing post-race (our post-change) physical searches motor cheating should be easy enough to control, very much unlike PEDs.
tremon 11y ago
Cycle racing exists in a symbiotic relationship with cycle manufacturing How many racing teams are named after bicycle manufacturers?
- misterS 11y ago
  Of the current world tour [1]: five. * BMC RACING TEAM * CANNONDALE PRO CYCLING TEAM * LAMPRE - MERIDA * TEAM GIANT - ALPECIN * TREK - SEGAFREDO (I may have missed some) But note that many if not all teams are sponsored by manufacturers (frames, wheels, geartrain, etc). Edit: five. Forgot Merida. [1] http://www.uci.ch/road/teams/ http://www.uci.ch/road/teams/
  - danielsamuels 11y ago
    Lampre-Merida too. So 5 total.
- danielsamuels 11y ago
  4 I think: Cannondale, Lampre Merida, Giant Alpecin, Trek Segafredo.
redblacktree 11y ago
> There are some one-design motorsport racing classes, but they are far from the most popular. NASCAR would like a word with you. Edit to add: I know that NASCAR allows more than a single design, but it's in the same spirit. The options are extremely limited.
landryraccoon 11y ago
Why are recumbent bikes banned then? They're entirely human powered, and far more efficient.
thomasweiser 11y ago
> Technology is an integral part of cycling Cheating is an integral part of cycling

dclowd9901 11y ago

If technology is integral, then why ban motors at all? Small motors and powerful compact energy supplies are technological advancements.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jdietrich 11y ago
It's a balance between man and machine, between tradition and progress. F1 racing cars would be faster if they replaced the driver with a computer. The fans want to see the skills of the driver tested, so the sport bans common driver aids like traction control and anti-lock brakes. Cycling with motors isn't cycling, it's motorcycling. Allowing motors would change the sport in an undesirable and irrevocable manner. In cycling, technological progress is governed by the Lugano Charter. Technology is an intrinsic part of the sport, but it is not allowed to play a dominant role. http://oldsite.uci.ch/imgarchive/Road/Equipment/The%20Lugano%20charter.pdf http://oldsite.uci.ch/imgarchive/Road/Equipment/The%20Lugano...
- bigiain 11y ago
  Interestingly though - those now-banned-in-F1 driver aids are all over showroom floors and making regular cars safer. (as are older technologies initially developed in top level racing - disk brakes, fuel injection, radial tires, etc...) Racing in all it's forms is nearly always conducted under some entirely arbitrary artificial constraints (even when the rules don't enforce it, money ends up taking the same place). Sometimes those constraints are "we'll sell more cars if they all look a little bit like Fords or Chevys", sometimes they're more like "we've got home-team advantage, so we'll make the rules say you've got to sail your America's Cup contender to Newport to compete, even if you come from Europe/New Zealand instead of Rhode Island...". Sometimes the constrains are "these new 4WD supercharged Group B Rally Cars are killing too many people, lets stop racing anything that fast thru the trees - lets race showroom floor shopping trolly hatchbacks instead..." Keep in mind that "Cycling with motors" isn't motorcycle racing either - in motorcycle racing there's engine capacity limits, number of cylinders, number of gear ratio limits, minimum weights, restrictions on brake materials, even things like limits on the number of motors used for a season and work allowed to be done on motors between races, and MotoGP are now "standardising" the engine management electronics/software as well... WorldSBK have homologation rules, where you need to sell a certain number of your racing motorcycle to the general public as road bikes to be allowed to race (modified) version in the race series. (I'm currently riding round a two stroke 125 Cagiva Mito that's a roadgoing version of the now banned/superseded 125GP bikes... These day's you've got no choice but to compete on a 250cc four stroke in that race series/class. In the past there were 8 cylinder bikes, and bikes with 16 speed gearboxes - all just history/legends now...) A lot of "the balance" seems to end up being about money - either to stop the guy with the deepest pockets from wining everything (who'd want to go sail boat racing against Larry Ellison without some rules about how much he can spend?), or to make sure the sponsors keep pouring money into "the sport" (how many F1 rules do you suppose there are relating to drivers meeting corporate and sponsor hospitality and media requirements, rather than technical regulations about what you're allowed to race on the track?)
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > Technology is an intrinsic part of the sport, but it is not allowed to play a dominant role. I can't make any sense of this. Any bicycle is 100% a product of technology. I can't think of anything that plays a more dominant role in bicycle racing than... bicycles.
gnaritas 11y ago
Because motorcycle racing is an entirely different sport.
harlanlewis 11y ago
It's hard to disagree from my own perspective of a commuting cyclist who would like to see racing drive cycling advancement in ways that trickle down to affordably solving the last mile(s) problem for the human race, but allowing more than a single human as the source of power would simply transform the sport into something else. It's not necessarily better or worse, but using a motor is a fundamentally different activity and begs all sorts of arbitrary dimensions/mass/power restrictions or else it turns into a motorcycle race. There might not be a more efficient animal than a human on a bicycle, but we don't hold a candle to a Ducati.
- greggman 11y ago
  What about a flywheel? Probably a net negative. What about a motor with no battery. You pedal to power it? Just wondering what the limit of "human powered" is
  - paulmd 11y ago
    A clutched flywheel would probably be an advantage in many kinds of terrain. Imagine being able to spin up the flywheel from pedalling or gravity (geared) while going downhill, and then when you hit an uphill section you kick in the gear and pedal easy. It would essentially turn most tracks into "flat" tracks.
    - nradov 11y ago
      No the extra weight of a flywheel plus motor/generator would far outweigh any small advantage. The energy density is just too low for any flywheel small enough to fit on a bike. And the gyroscopic effects would mess with handling.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        Bikes already have two really large flywheels.
        11y ago
bigiain 11y ago
Why ban steroids? Why ban amphetamines? Whyban surgical modification? Why ban genetic engineering? Why ban motorised exo skeletons and nano technology? (I just read a great short story along these lines called ""Slipping" by Lauren Brookes - from the EFF'S PWNING TOMORROW short fiction anthology...)
- paulmd 11y ago
  The same question applies to all of those. If we allow technological enhancements, why is one enhancement too far? You couldn't run the course as fast as you can cycle it, after all. The same argument applies to all those other things - if we allow them then the playing field needs to stay absolutely level otherwise the person who can afford the strongest drugs, the newest gene-splicing, and the most efficient exoskeleton wins. It's either about the athletic competition or it's not. If it's about the athletic condition, then the impact of technological factors should be minimized.
  - zo1 11y ago
    It's already about which country/team/city can spend the most money scouting the best talent, or poaching them from ever-expanding pools. Then there's the matter of paying the most for the best coaches, best data analytics to optimize the bio performance of the human individual, etc. I'd argue that you can't really say that money is the reason for not include or limiting technology. If it's about a level playing field, then money should be the first thing to remove. How about a random sampling of a country/city's population? Have them compete against each-other. Otherwise, it'll always be about money as it's integral to sport.
  - rhizome 11y ago
    Then it'll be like, "why can I only have two wheels?" Bicycle racing, whose equipment is required to have only one source of power, a certain minimum weight, and no disc brakes (and maybe a couple others) is probably one of the less-constrained pro sports.
    - bigiain 11y ago
tehwalrus 11y ago
It crosses the border between using human muscles' energy output (and optimising the mechanical efficiency of that) and using some other energy source. Which is a fairly clear barrier for anyone to understand.

tzs 11y ago

How about something in between? A rider and a manufacturer can work together to design a new bike for that rider, but for actual races the manufacturer has to build an instance of that bike under supervision of race officials and turn it over to them, and it is that instance that the rider must use in the race. Once the bike is turned over to race officials, no one is allowed unsupervised access. That allows innovation, while making it much harder for a rider and team to cheat.

StephenConnell 11y ago
Wouldn't that be more work than just inspecting the bikes?
hinkley 11y ago
Those bikes tend to get stripped down every day. Some of the frame designs have at times been rated for less than 10k miles, meaning they wear out at some point, possibly before the end of the race. For instance a commercial aluminum frame is overbuilt so that it doesn't vibrate itself to pieces, but if you are going to get a new one in a week why bother?
usrusr 11y ago
Frames are OTS products under current UCI regulations. But fitting that frame to the rider involves a lot of individual tweaking by the team mechanic, so you can't really lock them down ahead of time. But with IR cameras and a reasonable identification system directing post-race (our post-change) physical searches motor cheating should be easy enough to control, very much unlike PEDs.

tremon 11y ago

Cycle racing exists in a symbiotic relationship with cycle manufacturing How many racing teams are named after bicycle manufacturers?

misterS 11y ago
Of the current world tour [1]: five. * BMC RACING TEAM * CANNONDALE PRO CYCLING TEAM * LAMPRE - MERIDA * TEAM GIANT - ALPECIN * TREK - SEGAFREDO (I may have missed some) But note that many if not all teams are sponsored by manufacturers (frames, wheels, geartrain, etc). Edit: five. Forgot Merida. [1] http://www.uci.ch/road/teams/ http://www.uci.ch/road/teams/
- danielsamuels 11y ago
  Lampre-Merida too. So 5 total.
danielsamuels 11y ago
4 I think: Cannondale, Lampre Merida, Giant Alpecin, Trek Segafredo.

redblacktree 11y ago

> There are some one-design motorsport racing classes, but they are far from the most popular. NASCAR would like a word with you. Edit to add: I know that NASCAR allows more than a single design, but it's in the same spirit. The options are extremely limited.

landryraccoon 11y ago

Why are recumbent bikes banned then? They're entirely human powered, and far more efficient.

thomasweiser 11y ago

> Technology is an integral part of cycling Cheating is an integral part of cycling