I’d be curious to know how many of the pro bikes at Kona would fail a 100,000 iteration stress test. I just looked at the article Matt did back then.
The more I think about this, the more I think it’s an education thing for AGers. They mimick what the pros say and do, when obviously it’s not clear they know what they are doing.
They mimick BS aero hacks but at least they won’t face plant with those. I just saw a ridiculous one in IG. We should not rely on WT or IM to control this.
/pink Ironman should require all frames to increase frame reach by 5cm, allow for 32mm tires, have UDH, and be 1x only
Glad you put 32mm tires in pink
but here is a point to consider when was the last time a bike part in tri actually really failed in a race. ie its a rather rare occurrence
and how many 10 times more often ,do we have issues with screws not tighthend proper after travelling
ie the question is what makes effectively more sense to improve safety. or doe we work on foul proof systems hookless rims …that make user error very unlikely you know what I mean lol
I think this is incredibly important. These rules are essentially policies. The Economist, John list, talks about a need for policy based-evidence (vs evidence-based policy), where examination of existing real world evidence for the need for a policy is considered early on, compared to making hypotheses about possible future issues, implementing a policy, and then testing in the future the effects of the policy.
The majority of these Ironman/UCI rules are hypotheses about possible future situations, and these policies come with unintended consequences. List is proposing policy-based evidence as a way to negate many unintended consequences, and reduce unneeded policies/rules.
Even so, most of these are going to be blamed on shipping damage, so even there hard to gauge since athletes aren’t going to want to throw their equipment sponsor under the bus.
Racing is a small proportion of a bikes use. Most people train on the setup they race. I’m aware of over-extended setups that have broken in training.
And ‘mechanical issue’ in the race report covers a lot of things.
There was an olympic medallist that had a series of ITU races with mechanical issues (quite a few years ago). The issue was that every frame in his size from the bike sponsor broke in the same place. That was never said out loud.
Of course, not all breakages are catastrophic. One competitor bracket that I asked the PD test lab to acquire only made it 25% of the way through the test. And they broke a lot in real life. But that would just cause the extension to loosen and a bit of rattling - not immediate collapse. There are plenty of ways things can break and it’s inconvenient, not disastrous. The scary thing with cantilevered extenders is that they can tip into the second category.
I’m not contending that there is a massive problem of breakages being covered up. Just that breakages are happening. Which means people are getting hurt. Which makes it rather different to ‘that athlete has taller shoes than I do so they’re getting an advantage’
I dont want to mitigate the issues , but what iam really saying is that we do have way more issues with user error than really bad design.
and I think we would be better of to think more how to make it more user friendly
to reduce the error of the user.
but I totally get your and cyclenutnz point.
Agree. But we also have users mimicking what they see elsewhere.
Take the Kona men’s photo gallery. Tell me if those all look safe
I’ll feel much better if @cyclenutnz tells me “all ok, no problems there”
It’s the same as what you do.
“Is it aero?”
Have to test to be able to answer that
“Is it safe?”
Have to test as a combination - not just the extender or extension on its own.
And there is never really a final answer for either - always something new to test. The PD test lab never stops, it’s no problem keeping those staff busy.
There is at least one (older) bike out there that should never have adaptors put on, but it commonly does.
Even without extra reach - some of the full arm bath extensions worry me as they will be so much stiffer than what the basebar was tested with. It may not be a problem but without testing…??