If you are planning a breakaway on a flat stage in the tour, why not break out your TT bike with a disk? Is there a rule against using your time trial bike in a stage other than a time trial? If you can’t use a TT bike in a normal stage how about the disk? Why not use the fastest equipment possible if you are planning a breakaway?
For one thing that would phone in your intentions pretty well. Taking off on your own will pretty much get you laughed at unless you are some superstar unknown genius. Jackie Durand probably tried that trick several hundred times in his pro career and may have even won once or twice. If you have been watching the Tour or Giro the peloton is amazing at pulling breakaways in within 5k from the finish. The fastest time time trial riders can maybe hold 30mph for 1 hour. The pack can crank it up to 40mph on the flats when they need to.
on a road bike a disc would be a little faster, but plenty of guys are running fairly deep rims anyway so I would think your gains would be minimal. Sometimes you see a disc in a crit.
There is a rule about aerobars, so you would have to use road bars on your tt bike.
Someone more knowledgeable will probably chime in here, but I seriously doubt aerobars would be legal in the peleton. If they are, they shouldn’t be.
I doubt these guys are much faster on their TT bikes anyway. Their position on a road bike is way better than what I hold on a TT bike. It must be nice to be a like a cat.
In a mass start track, road or cyclocross race, forward facing bars are illegal due to the danger of impalement. The UCI technical wheels for road and cyclocross mass start wheels are in effect and disc wheels are not legal in my reading of those either.
If you are planning a breakaway on a flat stage in the tour, why not break out your TT bike with a disk?
Cannot use a TT bike in a mass start race, and using a disc for road racing is showing your intent
Is there a rule against using your time trial bike in a stage other than a time trial?
Yes, illegal
If you can’t use a TT bike in a normal stage how about the disk?
No problem, yes you can use a disc, front or rear if you want
Why not use the fastest equipment possible if you are planning a breakaway?
Because breaking away is more tactics than aerodynamics
rules state that a wheel must have 12 minimum spokes, and does not mention discs as far as I can see, however they are used at UCI world cup events in mass start track races, so they have not been deemed illegal in that respect
http://www.uci.ch/english/about/rules_2004/ch01.pdf
Page 51
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today was a flat stage…45.7km/h average!
The mass start rules don’t mention track racing. It did for one month. Then I speculate someone realized that the wheels most people use would be illegal (Mavic IO’s and Cometes).