This week, Colnago launched its new aero bike, which will be ridden by Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates:
Now, I should say from the outset that I don’t like this bike.
I LOVE IT.
Wait, what?
[Sound of phonograph needle scraping across record grooves as it’s hastily removed, intern get on that would you?]
Okay, fine, as a proponent of traditional bikes at first glance this is everything I’m against. For example, my own Italian racing bike has shifters like these:
Meanwhile, this is a computer-controlled lump of plastic with proprietary everything:
And one could buy several timelessly exquisite Italian road bikes for the price of the “frame kit” alone:
See?
Though the truly wise investment for the discerning road bicyclist with over six thousand EuroBux™ (or its regional equivalent) to spend would be to buy one timeless Italian bike, one ultra-comfy lugged Rivendell Roadini, and then blow the rest of the money on fancy dinners.
Setting that aside, the reason I love the new Colnago is that I hope it represents the point at which professional racing bicycles and sporty bikes for “normal” people are finally going their separate ways once and for all. This would be a very good thing. The more I think about it, pro race bikes should be high-tech, quasi-experimental cutting-edge machines. I mean why the hell not? It’s about riding a bicycle as fast as possible, right? If you want to see purely human speed-based competition then watch people running.
Instead, the UCI has tried to keep the bikes “traditional.” We of course saw this in the late ’90s, when they declared that road racing bicycles “shall be of a traditional pattern, i.e. built around a main triangle,” and they banned bikes like the Wife Oil:
Sure, this meant that our sporting heroes continued to ride bicycles with classic silhouettes. But competition being what it is, it also meant designers continued to pursue every possible advantage while remaining within those confines. So 20 years later, you wind up with this:
Sure, it has a diamond frame, but is it somehow more true to the idea of the traditional bicycle than the Y-Foil was? I would argue that it is not. Meanwhile, all those “advantages” make their way down the line, and while th…[Continued]
[From here.]
But maybe I’m too trusting.
