At this point in time, besides those who make and/or sell them, who is benefitting from this?
I understand the intent, and perhaps it made sense back when bikes had simple round tube frames, but now? Really??
Who benefits from the wheel or who benefits from the rule?
The rule seems to be to minimize the amount of wind pushing the rear wheel. Clearly, not every single rule is based on direct scientific experiment, but it seems reasonable. And it seems reasonable people will push the margins.
All IM needs to do is set a front and rear wheel depth limit for Kona if they want to continue on this path.
I do have to say, I think those 180 rears look pretty sexy. If I didn’t already have a HED disc, I’d be happy to just get a 180 and rock that if it got me half the gains of a disc over a rear 90 for instance.
Has anyone tested these?
Well I used one on Saturday, the HED 180 Jet, and can say it’s definitely to my advantage on both downhills and cross winds. I was passing people in descents freewheeling while they were still hammering on the cranks. These are guys who had passed me on the flats or climbs and all had 6-8 rear wheels. In the crosswinds I could feel the same sail effect I get from my disc. And it’s the front wheel that can make crosswinds sketchy for bike handling, not the rear. I started the race weighing 157 and had zero problems descending from Hawi and I was hauling ass. And it does look killer.
^^^^^This.
The no discs rule was stupid, since rear discs don’t negatively impact handling. The 180s are a loophole workaround, and amount to having a wheel that really only makes sense for two races: Kona and Coz…and only due to the current restriction.
Either get rid of the rule (preferable), or put a depth limit in the rage of general use deep carbon wheels (90-100mm). Also a limit on spoke thickness so you don’t end up with another workaround like this:
Yeah I’ve raced a few times in St. George, including the infamous 2012 full IM windstorm using a disc and 80 front that were windier then my 4X in Kona. It’s fine.
Honeslty alot of it has to do with the rider. And most of the time it’s the front wheel that makes things get weird… Not the rear.
Chris Froome does not agree 
But yes, even my wife was worried about riding with the disc wheel on windy races (moreover after two weeks spent in Lanzarote 
).
Finally you must have strong crosswind to feel something. Whereas, 45mm front wheel could be too much in Lanza
I do not know big island, so i can not say if it could be ok
Surely it should be up to the rider. It’s a triathlon, it’s not like there’s a peloton of riders who’re going to wipe each other out if they have a wobble.
If they think the winds are dangerous, well, tri-bars are 1000x more dangerous for handling than any rear wheel in any conditions.
This is true and for every example I can come up with why a disc could cause an athlete to drift into another athlete, moto, group, etc. coming down from Hawi, I have the same concern about tribars. Sometimes it’s pretty sketchy as is.
And I guess that’s the rebuttal? “As is” it can be pretty sketchy in the wrong conditions – so removing the disc wheel just removed one extra aspect of that. To which, the actual rule should be then to also limit deep fronts and super deep rears? And then to make a rule that no one can be in aero bars for certain sections… and so on.
Drawing lines is hard. So they simply draw it at the wheel, and the question is, has it worked? Has there been any cases of athletes getting pushed into other race traffic on Hawi?
I don’t know about collisions but I do know way back when, people were blown off the road.
There are ample cases of riders self-regulating on wheel depth (no rule needed). Long before it becomes a safety hazard, running a wheel you can’t control costs time due to spending energy fighting the bike and having to leave aero more often. Lots of pros opt for a front wheel <100mm for these reasons. Technically the rules would let you run the HED 180 as a front wheel, but no one is that suicidal.
