How 'spartan'...

That aside, regarding cycling, standard mass manufactured piece? In one size that all have to fit to?

Naa...

Lookup Japan's Keirin racing. I think it's pretty much that. IIRC at the top levels they also require the racers to stay onsite under observation for several days before a race.

That would essentially kill cycling as a professional sport. Much of the team revenue comes from equipment sponsors. And while many of the equipment innovations get a bit ridiculous, some of them have really benefitted amateur cyclists. I would hate to still be stuck with a 10-speed drivetrain on a steel tube frame with mechanical friction shifters just because that was "standard".

You saw this with cyclecross bikes for a long time. I had a beautiful cyclecross bike that I rode everywhere and I loved that bike but the cable-pull brakes sucked - like rear-end a car in traffic bad. Nobody made a cyclecross bike with disc brakes until the UCI allowed them in competition; now they all have disc brakes. Same for the extensive use of carbon. Love it or hate it, carbon has fueled intense innovation that you can see on display in higher-end consumer bikes and, while I don't have it or want it, electronic shifting is crisp and perfect. I don't like yet another electronic device but for a weekend rider to never need to tune a mechanical derailleur again is a game changer - you know they already have their phone with them 24/7 (especially you, roadies)

I'd be perfectly happy on a steel tube 10-speed from 1975 if I was allowed a modern click shifter and modern disk brakes. Steel frame bikes are really nice, and 10 gears is more than you need anyway. Steel frame bikes from 1975 won't win you a modern race, but they won't be far behind.

Yes Steel is Real but the last Tour winner on a steel bike was in the '90s (and that's the subject). Bikes weigh no more than 8kg. The weight weenies are winning, carbon everything down to brake rotors.

> I was allowed a modern click shifter and modern disk brakes

Doubt you'd see a bike equipped with anything else at the Tour.

At the top level - which is pretty much the definition of a tour winner - grams make the difference between a win and loss, so of course they will not be riding steel.

I'm not at top level and never will be. If I want to go faster there are many things I can do that are more effective than playing what my bike is made out of.

Somewhat. UCI has a minumum weight (6.8kg) for bikes and often teams have to add weights to their bikes to hit the minimum limit. You easily get lighter bikes but your bike needs to be 6.8kg to be race legal. It certainly limits how many bits and bobs on the bike get switched over to using titanium or carbon fiber.

I'm not that deep into racing, but I'll guess that teams still want to be way under that weight so they can strategically place weight where they want it.

They may want it, but the technology only recently converged to the point where you can have an aerodynamically optimized bike under the limit weight. Before that there were special lightweight ones for the mountain stages and heavier but aerodynamically faster ones for the flatter stages. Most teams still got these two, plus of course another bike for time trial, because time trial stages are not mass start and the bikes and rider positions can be even faster and less safe there.

Some bikes are over the minimum weight, by a wide margin, and rode by the race leaders too.

You can make a steel frame bike which will be lighter than the UCI weight limit with modern technology. It's just nobody cares to make one because the "unracer" crowd who believe steel frames are magic, won't be spending a couple grand on a light steel frameset and the actual racers are fine with the carbon frames, where it's much easier to control properties of different parts of the frame through fiber layout.

What I want as a non racer is different from what racers want so I prefer a cheaper steel fram, as the gains from an expensive one won't be worth it.

of course the above is a guess, if someone makes such a frame I may try it and decide it is worth it.

Non-racers appreciate light and comfortable bikes too (if anything it's much easier to load a 20 pounds bike on a car/bus rack than a 30 pounds one), this is why carbon is now even in the midrange consumer segment. And with the tubeless tires even on the road bikes nowadays, the magical suspension properties of a steel frame are hardly noticeable over the effect of lower pressure in the tire. So I don't think steel frames are ever coming back.

That's not really true, if you can make a ultralight full-featured steel-framed bike there will be buyers. There is a not so small crowd of "weight weenies" and/or steel frame fans willing to spend big.

How do you know? Do you believe weight weenies are only into steel and this is why they don't buy ultralight carbon bikes (there are few under 3kg carbon/composite bikes that had been made but nobody bothers with industrial production of 100K bikes somehow).

3kg bikes are not practical. But I'm pretty sure a complete modern (electronic groupset, disc brakes) circa 7kg steel bike would find buyers, especially as titanium bikes still do find buyers even at prices and weights both higher than comparable carbon bikes.

You could buy a 5.42kg steel bike with a carbon fork in 2019 https://www.bikeradar.com/news/worlds-lightest-steel-road-bi..., given that a regular steel fork is about 800g, even if the original carbon fork is 0g, you can throw in a steel fork for total 6.2kg. Disc brakes instead of rim brakes would be another 200g. Something tells me those don't sell very well though and the company had not been updating this model ever since. Looks like they've done it for publicity.

It’s the same problem in golf. Equipment has gotten so powerful that the strategy of the game has fundamentally changed. They can not realistically continue to make courses longer. So they’re “rolling back” the ball which will limit drive distances a bit but nothing regarding clubs.

And the reason why is the pro game makes a lot of money on endorsements. If a top pro is forced to use a club that is different from what amateurs need then the gravy train could stop.

But yes, golf is really hard and for amateurs the innovations help make the game more enjoyable. But for pros it’s just too much.

It's impossible to take technology out of the equation. I.e. that one person may have superior insights in their physiology/glucose levels, or a superior diet before the race. And so on.

Similarly in football, by studying your opponents in previous matches, so that you can identify weaknesses during the match, even if playing in isolation.

I get what you're saying but a part of the culture in my experience is tinkering and upgrading your bike, that doesn't have to necessitate spending huge amounts of money, especially if you do a lot of work yourself and buy parts second hand. The sport might appeal less with all that stripped away, but who knows maybe it would also be interesting to standardize some aspects.

This sounds similar to windsurfing, tinkering with your board, sail size, fin size, etc. is a big part of the sport.

Yet, at the Olympics, the gear is the same for everyone.

Btw, I can't remember where, but I heard that, in the old editions of the Tour de France not all gears were allowed, shifters for example weren't allowed even though they were available to amateurs.

Why not then allow motorcycles? They are just bikes upgraded with motors... Would make competition lot shorter too and interesting. Seeing them driving around without speed limits.

I'm guessing because they don't meet the criteria to participate, what's your point?

That adding a motor would be upgrade and tinkering of a bike. So why should it not be allowed? Isn't it entirely in same spirit?

Do you want me to enumerate the ways in which a bike is not a motorbike and the parameters in which people who are interested in bikes operate in their hobby or profession? Or are you asking why professional racing puts guidelines around what types of bikes can participate?

You’re being disingenuous and down right annoying. By your logic why not just use a F-18 and win the race in 10 minutes? Stop being asinine.

Not sure if you honestly believe this or just trying to be "edgy" but because a motorcycle is not a bicycle.

I assumed it was a reference to this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_doping

From a bit of reading, it sounds like there's a fairly widespread impression (or at least suspicion of) cheating. And that enforcement is quite weak, because the authorities care more about preventing public scandal than about preventing actual cheating.

Sounds like the typical case of people not looking at the core work required in order for the very expensive individual items like tailored nutrition, top-end (and even customized) parts, per-race-specific optimized chains and what not to make any sense whatsoever.

If your times are, say, 20% or more above the absolute top times for a given course, you've got a long way to go by improving yourself - on just about any bike whatsoever. The super expensive parts make low single digit differences.

It would require a different business model. Cycling is like F1 in that sponsors are trying to sell their equipment.

All the cycling equipment in races has to be available in mass market and usually can be bought, if you've got the money. It's not cheap but also it's not a F1 car. It's more like.. why would you buy it when you are not a racer.