I remember after that one episode of the lance chronicles (where his team made various clip-on bars for him), he eventually went with what Steve Hed made (although I don’t even think he did the uphill tt with any clip-ons). After that all the triathletes adopted it and profile released their own version. Hell lance even somewhat started the aero helmet craze (again), problem is when he was wearing just the giro fairing, the only thing triathletes could get their hands on was the lg prologue.
I still ride syntace. The dimensions happen to fit me perfectly and their super-comfy. I have s-bends that I’m may give away to some friends.
One thing we often overlook in the name of aerodynamics is comfort, and having your wrists cocked down with an S-bend is going to put strain on the rest of the chain up to the neck. There is a lot to be said about neutralizing and relaxing that part of the body on the bike. This goes back to being comfortable enough to ride the entire distance in the aero position versus losing all gains because you have to sit up and shake it out. I’ve had customers whose hands go numb because of the aerobar arrangement.
What about those of us who find s-bends comfortable, and skis really not? I’ve tried a lot of skis, and they’re all been very upright and I find that they cock my wrist **up **into an uncomfortable position. I think Felt’s f-bends are probably the best extensions known to mankind because they have enough upward travel to almost replicate a pistol-like grip that you can rest the pad of your hand on the bend and sort of align your fingers along the “slide,” to continue the metaphor.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that ski bends are the answer for everybody and S-bends are evil. I worded that poorly.
What I was trying to say is that the goal should be a comfortable, neutral upper body from fingertips to shoulders, and the most comfortable position has the potential to be aerodynamic. I have about a dozen different bends in the shop, including the Profile Design T+ series, which have 4 different flavors of ski bends, and one S-bend. Any of those can be appropriate for the right person.
The Zipp Evo bars are very intriguing, as they are factoring in a third dimension. The wrists have 3 planes of movement, so finding bars that support comfort in all of those planes makes me happy.
I know when we test in the tunnel S bends are slower the majority of the time vs ski bends.
Even with exact same body position? I wouldn’t have expected that because the ski bends tend to leave a round tube hanging out in space. While straighter tubes seem to be tighter to the arms.