Comment by SeanLuke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SeanLuke | Hacker News Reader

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> - the UCI limits bicycles so that it's a race between cyclists, not bank accounts.

The UCI has been hypocritical, inconsistent, and mendacious in its claims here.

At the dawn of racing the UCI banned the recumbent Velocar not because it was so much faster (it was), but because the powerful (ahem) upright bicycle lobby demanded it.

The there was the Moulton, which started winning lots of races on its 17" tires in the 1960s. The UCI notionally banned it for nonsensical "safety" reasons, while it was really about small wheels being too fast. The big-wheel bike manufacturers had gotten scared.

Meanwhile, while the UCI was busy banning minor things like beam bikes, disc brakes, and even different rider positions (!), it was perfectly happy to allow huge changes in materials (carbon fiber notably), pedals, and wheels.

And then there's the UCI largely ignoring and wrist-slapping the biggest technological improvement by far: performance enhancing drugs.

So if you don't mind, allow me to be annoyed that the UCI has destroyed the small-wheel and recumbent market in the name of consistency, while being largely complicit in the biggest sports drug scandal in history.

So much distorted history.

Recumbent bicycles are older than the modern "safety" bicycle. They lost in the marketplace on their own merits long before the UCI even existed. They are faster in some scenarios, they are slower in others. They cost more, they weigh more, they break more, they're less agile.

The '30s were not the "dawn of racing." The peak of bicycle racing (and technological progress) was 1880-1917. That would be when the safety bicycle was emerging as the dominant configuration.

Moulton wheels had over 30 years to prove themselves before they were banned in 1996, following the Lugano Charter. They didn't.

I'm pretty sure UCI Rule 49 banning small wheels long preexisted 1996. There's little information on the web, but The Spaceframe Moultons describes the ban existing in at least the 1994 pamphlet (it's on google book search if you want to hunt: chapter 9). And certainly there's lots of stuff on the web claiming a near immediate ban, though with no specific date. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

I want to reply to another odd piece of your claim. Why are you comparing recumbents to safety bicycles? We're talking about uprights. And so far as I know, recumbent velocipedes are later than upright velocipedes, recumbent pedaled bikes are later than upright pedaled bikes (notably the boneshaker); and recumbent chained bikes are later than upright chained bikes.

And surely you realize that all of your claims (cost, weight, breaking, agility) can be more easily ascribed to the fact that uprights are a huge mass market with enormous R&D funding, and recumbents are a tiny little hobbyist thing. Okay, maybe not agility, that's probably inherent.

I ride with several people who do lots of mileage on 'bents. Lots of mileage (one has completed a 1200k brevet). These guys can cruise on the flats, and even on slight climbs, but as soon as the gradients hit 10%, they are forced to spin up in a ridiculously small gear. So, in some cases, yeah, 'bents could very be a performance gain, but I cannot imagine anyone riding competitively up the 20%+ slopes that races like the Giro and Vuelta include in their stages.

I agree, however, that the UCI seems to selectively make their equipment rules. At they've given up the disc brake fight in cyclocross, though some early returns show in certain conditions, rim brakes are still better.

Can you give a list of races won on a Moulton? It seems surprising, if true.

Try here: http://www.moultonbicycles.co.uk/heritage.html Prior to the ban, Moultons had just started doing well in British races. Moultons are presently banned under UCI rule 1.3.018.

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