It is worth mentioning that one of the reasons bicycle companies sponsor pro teams and supply them with equipment (among additional reasons)is to conduct real-world testing of their equipment in a demanding envrionment, often times more demanding than what a consumer may subject the same or similar equipment to. That sounds like what was happening here, and it sounds like that test was a success. The conditions were adverse. There was a failure. The failure was contained and did not result in a crash or injury. The system worked. Once again, hats off to Cervelo, and to Gerard for providing this information. To me, this only inspires confidence.

---

Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

Reposting to this thread to make sure it gets equal time at the top of the list as did the post that raised the issue.

"one of the reasons bicycle companies sponsor pro teams ...is to conduct real-world testing of their equipment "

That applies to any form of racing. Just as much with automobiles as with bicycles.

[reply]It is worth mentioning that one of the reasons bicycle companies sponsor pro teams and supply them with equipment (among additional reasons)is to conduct real-world testing of their equipment in a demanding envrionment, often times more demanding than what a consumer may subject the same or similar equipment to.[/reply]

Of course I can only speak for Cervelo, but I have to somewhat disagree with you. While there are many things that the team can test for us (and do a better job than we could do ourselves), these would be things related to new geometries, comfort, stiffness, "ride", etc. But we wouldn't use athletes as human crash test dummies, we have test machines for that. We wouldn't want to put anybody in harms way, pro or regular joe. Now I don't think Tom was trying to say that bike sponsors out there are trying to kill their athletes, but I just wanted to clarify that to me (and I presume to him as well) having riders break product is not the kind of testing that is recommendable, there are better ways to figure that out.

It is true that the pro race environment is usually more demanding than what I would encounter on my Sunday ride, but I can hit a big pothole here as well (especially in Toronto). So it makes sense to only have one set of standards, the highest, and in our particular case we have no choice since there is no difference between the pro frame and the other frames we sell. But that also applies to other companies who do proper testing, even if they make different frames for the pro team than they do for the normal market, I don't think they use different test standards.

---

Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
OPEN cycle

Further testimony to the degree of engineering, care and responsibility that make Cervelo bicycles a reliable product. It is worth mentioning that after selling a lot of Cervelos we have never had a frame fail in any way. At this time, they are the only manufacturer about whom we can say this. It is also the reason I bought three for myself (a P3, Soloist and R2.5). And I can buy any bike I want.

---

Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com