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Comment by etimberg | Hacker News Reader

To me, the olympics are about determining who is best at a sport. It's not a technical problem like a car race where bending the rules with creative engineering is expected and encouraged.

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The trouble is that people have different preferences for different equipment and by mandating one particular bike, you disadvantage a lot people based on who does better on a particular bike and aren't judging people solely based on who is the better cyclist. Consider the absurd extension of using exactly the same equipment where even the size of the bike is exactly the same, saddle height is the same, pedal length is the same, etc. There will be maybe one person who that is ideal with and whole lot more people suffering injuries from riding incorrectly sized bikes.

Therefore, since we can't all have exactly the same bikes, we need to come up with a definition of what is "fair" to adjust for the bike that someone races on. Sure, this allows for some degree creative engineering, but is that really a bad thing so long as money doesn't become the determining factor of who wins? It pushes the science of bikes forward and eventually that new tech will make its way to everyone, including amateur cyclists.

...and pro-cyclists get told which bikes and bits to ride.

The athletes can customize the bikes they are given by the sponsors as the sponsor is interested in winning the race even more than the athletes.

> The trouble is that people have different preferences for different equipment and by mandating one particular bike, you disadvantage a lot people based on who does better on a particular bike

This is not backed by fact.

Most world tour riders have very little choice on their equipment, nor do they choose the team sponsors. They have some leeway on a few third party components of their choice and can usually which frame model they use among a tiny selection of less than 3 models but that doesn't change drastically how the bike ride really as long as the bike fits. You could totally make a race where everybody ride the same kind of bike, and riders would be able to choose the frame size, saddle, stem and handlebar size, and possibly clipless pedal models that would make everything more standard.

Actually in Japan they do something similar in keiring. All frames are built with steel tubes, they use old styles of pedals with clips, and only parts stamped by NJS, following design and construction principles of track bikes of the late 70's, are approved. Sometimes regular olympic track racers spend a few months in Japan in the off season to get some additional money, they swap their high end carbon bikes prototypes to what looks like vintage track bikes of the 70's, you can actually see the bikes bending under load, yet the best riders with the best strategy of the day still win.

https://invidious.incogniweb.net/watch?v=9GWw31J60cM

3 models and a bunch of sizes as well. The Giant Propel Advanced SL 0 has 6 different size options. Even for cheap bikes, it’s common to have a small, medium, and large frame size.

As far as restricting technology, stopping at 70s tech seems really arbitrary. There are already rules and regulations for what you can use.

One final note: I’m pretty sure UCI would get a big lawsuit if they mandated one bike from a particular manufacturer due to antitrust concerns.

> One final note: I’m pretty sure UCI would get a big lawsuit if they mandated one bike from a particular manufacturer due to antitrust concerns.

I don't think so. It happens all the time in lower series of Motorsport and even the highest for tires. Formula 1 and Motogp are working respectively with Pirelli and Michelin if my memory is correct.

For esport world championship the UCI used Zwift in the early years and now it is their competitor MyWhoosh.

The keirin regulation using 70's tech was just an example to illustrate that controlling specs is possible. Same could be done but with a single make of bikes and just various frame sizes available for world tour. The issue is mostly that team would lose sponsorship so nobody has anything to gain. In the grand scheme of things, the difference between pro bikes is rather marginal and doesn't decide the outcome of the races.

Engineering is part of many sports, skiing, snowboarding, swimming (albeit limited after those floating suits), running. Even if you say they should all be about the sports performance only, there's engineering behind training schedules, equipment, diet, techniques & posture, etc.

It's not actually, though. For the majority of these sports, the professional leagues often have superior competition and performances than you see in the Olympics, with the notable exception being many of the individual sports where there isn't enough global interest to drive commercial organization outside the Olympics.

For example, the quality of basketball, soccer, and baseball you find in the pro leagues is all MUCH better than in the Olympics. Track & Field has a regular annual season that's already international (Diamond League), plus many standing invitationals, any of which are as likely to see records broken as the Olympics.

Diamond league may be more likely to see records broken, frankly, because it allows pace setters and the light indicators on the infield rail telling the runners exactly where the world record pace is at. But most athletes don't compete in every meet, so the field isn't usually as competitive, and nobody plans a four-year training peak around a diamond league meet, so maybe that makes up for it.

Yes, but where equipment is involved it's often very personal. In tennis a top professional can't just switch rackets, for example. Even I have problems playing with other people's rackets.

Is it that black-and-white? Many sports are a mix of athlete ability and equipment (alongside other variables like training, diet, etc.). Everything from running shoes to swimsuits to climbing shoes are engineered to heck and back, and the training regimes etc. are also super-scienced.

It's not like we just have naked people wrestling each other these days. The equipment is a part of the package now.

In your view, are activities like cycling and snowboarding valid as Olympic sports? Neither could exist without a significant amount of creative engineering.

There's a difference between creative engineering enabling the whole sport and creative engineers competing with each other behind the scenes.

Famously difficult to draw a satisfying line between these two things. The history of every sport is a conflict about exactly this, entire modern sports are the relics of people being unsatisfied with how the line was drawn at one particular time.

I'm not saying it's not a good goal to have, just you kind of have to view it as an inherently unsolvable problem to get anything productive out of it.

Bicycle-tech wise, little can stay behind the scenes in cycling.

https://assets.ctfassets.net/761l7gh5x5an/6cmP3f8KY4mTfI6hAY...:

“Equipment shall be of a type that is sold for use by anyone practicing cycling as a sport.

Any equipment in development phase and not yet available for sale (prototype) must be subject of an authorization request to the UCI Equipment Unit before its use. Authorization will be granted only for equipment which is in the final stage of development and for which commercialization will take place no later than 12 months after the first use in competition. The manufacturer may request a single prolongation of the prototype status if justified by relevant reasons”

So, that gives manufacturers an incentive to innovate, but won’t give teams an advantage for long.

Other sports have similar regulations.

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