There are plenty of products in the market today which have established the benchmark for reasonable. Go much beyond what exists today and you enter the risk of unreasonable, pretty simple. The only time a ref is going to even think about this rule for age groupers going forward is if they walk past a bike and they see something that makes them double take. A BTS storage box that is roughly the size of an something on the market today won’t register as there are tons of existing bikes with them already. Add a fin that holds 4 tubes and 8 Co2 and it will likely catch their eye and get your set-up scrutinized and likely dinged.
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I suspect the answer is to wait until one of the pros does something egregious that tests the waters for the rest of us…
Yup and then hopefully instead of a rule change they simply share it as an example of taking things too far and how it was outside the spirit of the rule. I think it will be a while before we see anyone push things too far. We may see a few borderline cases but I doubt (hope) we’ll see anything that makes us go
I dunno - I think the strakes in Trevor Foley’s aerobars certainly qualify. Ditlev had a similar getup today in Frankfurt, but attached to his helmet visor. (I’m sure someone smarter than I will chime in and say the visor modification served a different purpose, though).
Once the bottles went down the shirt, the cat was out of the bag, and it’s a bit of an arms race right now as to who can be the most aero. I can imagine a certain cohort of pros already thinking about how to exploit the rule in time for Nice.
It’s just like doping. Testing catches up, dopers get smarter.
Bottles down the jerseys get banned, erector set BTA mounts are installed on bikes. Pretty soon someone will come out with a 250x300 aero hydration box that stores exactly 1L of liquid.
This is the point. By making the de facto rule “reasonable” you allow the whims of individual officials to dictate different and possibly contradictory allowances. There’s obvious things that are clearly unreasonable, but like Tim shows above, there’s some grey area. What happens when one official say yes to Foley’s strakes, but at the next event one says no? That’s no way to run a sport.
The fundamental issue is that the sport has moved past equipment based on feel and looks into equipment based on engineered, tested aero solutions - yet the rules (up until DTU) were still based on feel and looks. When there’s measurable benefits to pushing soft boundaries of rules then people will push those boundaries with no idea of the actual limits.
I think we ought to be able to rely on the Head Ref of each race having sufficient competence and judgement to bowl fairings out (like those splines which have no structural beneficial function or the wide fairing tray LCB rocked in Eagleman). If athletes have ‘novel’ cunning designs, the unusual design pre-vetting rule can be applied.
Or we could go descend into the depths of the ICU imbroglio, which noone wants.
A set of images, properly shared, saying what’s a fairing and what’s not would be excellent guidance for the ‘out of the box’ thinkers around.
And, yes (off topic), ffs allow disc wheels in Kona, or specify a maximum rim depth (and ‘spoke’ chord) for the rear wheel.
5.03 (i) Non-traditional or unusual bikes or equipment are illegal unless, prior to the start of the Race, approval has been granted from the Event-specific Head Referee. (DSQ)
I think it starts to get more complicated when we realize that there’s more than one way to incorporate the same aerodynamic effect.
Let’s say for a moment that Foley’s aerobars were disallowed at that race. The obvious solution then is just to have thicker aerobars in the same shape (rather than just the obvious strake) so that the leading edge accomplishes the same thing. Think the Canyon or LCB bars but with the strakes as part of the internal structure/shape.
Then if you disallow that, the next step is to design a BTA hydration system that assumes a similar shape. You might need to 3D print something - which is probably outside the range most amateurs can handle, but a pro of Foley’s stature may be able to commission something from a 3D print shop in exchange for sponsorship or something.
Not allowed 3D printing? Ok, now we get into the realm of integrated cockpits. Some manufacturer, maybe not this year, but in a few years, gets smart and then integrates whatever aerobar system is legal with a BTA hydration system that’s mass produced enough to count. One system that achieves the same thing. Bonus points if its exactly 2L as well!
The net effect is the aerodynamically same (or probably better) at each step, but all you’ve done is increase the cost. Just like the bottle down the shirt, once the general principles have been proven, I can MacGyver some strakes at home out of duct tape and gumption, but the fully integrated system where this is all going is going to be out of my budget.
RE: to both-
Isn’t this just a long roundabout path to UCI-style boxes? This isn’t allowed because we previously disallowed this similar piece/this is allowed because we previously allowed this similar piece. After enough thumbs up/thumbs down the allowable equipment converges on a set of shapes, designs, and dimensions. Some might even call them boxes.
I’d much rather have free-for-all boxes as opposed to fuzzy wording where you’re never quite sure if you’re ok or not.
We;ll go through 10 years of thumbs up to this/thumbs down to that until eventually we’ve built the allowable boxes and require
I think part of the wheeze here is that the bottle furthest to the rear is not a simple round cage, so the 750ml bottle reference check does not apply: it’s the ‘Elite’ or similar cage/bottle and that’s 200mm and as mounted within 250mm from reference point (below elbow).
Here’s a set up where the lower bottle is well more than 250mm to the rear of the reference point (arm rest below elbow). I guess just his training arrangement.
Ugh, kill that bar with fire, too.
Depending on the photo angle, that bar might also extend past the leading edge of the wheel
Give it up man. Those bars aren’t going anywhere
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Apologies if this is mentioned somewhere in the previous 441 replies…
I ride a TT Trinity. I’m confident my rear bottles are legal. I run a profile design front bottle.
Is my 3d printed rear tool box illegal? I’m not going to be troubling the podium at my next event in August if that matters 
Thank you.
I would say completely fine. Your BTS cage is tiny (within 300x300mm box) and the rear storage box is ‘excluded’ (provided it can actually ‘contain’ stuff.
12th June version is:
Thank you, that’s great news. The ammendment you’ve linked to i’d not seen.
Yes the box has a tube, puncture repair kit and a multi tool in it.
I am really confused about the rules now. I’ve been working hard to set it up to fit within the box. But today at Challenge Roth I have seen so many bikes with a bta bottle that is positioned too far back. I have been stressing about this for a couple of days. I enter the bike check, they checked exactly nothing! (no brake, helmet or anything!) This official with his DTU shirt… I am still flabbergasted.
I’ll add 3 pics. The first one is of a random Quintana Roo that was nearby. The other my old (easy) and new (stressed about) setup.
I really wanted to point both my bottles backwards and use the garmin holder on my aerobars. But to stay within the limits I decided on a back to back setup, bought a profile design bottle holder with Garmin mount. And now it seems went through all that for nothing. I thought the Germans were strict!
Any other experiences? I did see the measurement thingies so I wonder if someone else had to change his setup today. Also in the pro field, (Matt Hanson for exampe) not a lot but certainly a couple of too far backward mounted bottles.
Hope you have a great race!
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