Because bracing the lower forearm against the bar ramps has always been a fairly normal thing to do while riding a low posture in the hoods, and these sorts of rules from the UCI have typically been in favor of tradition.

And because many pro racers on "normal" drop bars are still doing it while pulling when the pace is hot and, seemingly, getting away with it. At the very least, the rule is being enforced with extremely low aggression.

It's completely ridiculous.. Also the other riders complaining about it.. It definitely isn't less safe than all the guys now using 34cm bars with the levers rotated inwards all the way, and if you think you're at a disadvantage, nobody's saying you can't get similar bars if you want. I can understand the discussion why this would be allowed when puppy paws aren't but by the letter of the rules, this isn't illegal.. Another case of the UCI leaving some things open for interpretation and when someone takes advantage of the rules they're like 'ah wait but we did not mean x, we meant y'.

I agree with Burnthesheep, if someone finds a loop hole in the rule book and gains an advantage from it, like in motorsports they should be able to until the rules are changed for the upcoming season.

They should have at least allowed van Schip to ride with a regular handlebar instead of DQ'ing him if they had given him authoristation to ride with those Speeco bars.

We need a hostile take over of the UCI board, all the oldtimers (no offence) that still live in the 80's are out, all of their friends as well so they can't get someone voted back in or whatever. Have a board of members with a refreshing take on cycling. Allow for innovation, better coverage,.. Fines for littering actually go to some kind of nature preservation organisation instead of paying for the VIP flights of the UCI board members, etc.

The problem with the UCI is that it never thinks enough to resolve the nuances ahead of the time, so that when it issues a ruling via fiat, it often comes across as selective.

Note that all four riders below are doing the sphinx, and none had their hands actually on the handlebar (all are grabbing onto the knobby part of the shifter). Some actually have a bit of his forearm draped on the handlebar. Yet none of the four was DQ'ed. Furthermore, I'm not aware of any complaints from other riders about the positions of these four riders. So clearly, as presently stated, both the sphinx and the position offered by the ABB bar would run afoul of UCI regulations, but the outrage is only on the latter. There's a very simple way of resolving this: allows certain forearm contact (say up to 9 cm) but disallow contact exceeding that. That should make it so the sphinx position is allowed, while banning the ABB position. Of course, ABB could always come around with ways to circumvent this, but unless UCI would want to implement regulations on minimum width, it can't outlaw such creations.