Some of professional biking’s most famous tools specialists have independently shunned the concept that proscribing gears will enhance rider security within the professional peloton.
Dan Bigham, previously Performance Engineer at Ineos Grenadiers and now Head of Engineering at Red Bull Bora-Hansgrohe, and Casper Von Folsach, Performance Coach at Uno-X Mobility have each made their opinions clear that proscribing gears wouldn’t enhance rider security as prompt not too long ago by Wout van Aert and Chris Froome.
Jenco Drost, Head of Performance Equipment at Van Aert’s staff, Visma-Lease a Bike, additionally provided his ideas however opted to take a extra pragmatic stance.
The argument was sparked by Van Aert in an interview with Sporza final week. “Limiting the gears would make the game quite a bit safer, in my view,” he defined. “Other riders do not suppose so however I’m satisfied about it.”
And in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport, Froome adopted this up, saying “The speeds wanted to maneuver a 60 [tooth] chainring could be above 80km/h and you are still pedalling. Maybe we have to put a restrict on them. I’m not saying junior gears, however possibly 56 or 54 must be the restrict, to maintain the speeds down on the descents.”
Their argument claims that with greater gears, riders are in a position to assault on quick descents, whereas on smaller gears they might ‘spin out’ – primarily being unable to pedal rapidly sufficient so as to add any significant enter.
“If you’re on that descent with a gear restrict, nobody can transfer up,” Van Aert defined. “Now the gears are so large that you simply nonetheless take into consideration overtaking.”
The newest race content material, interviews, options, evaluations and knowledgeable shopping for guides, direct to your inbox!
Bigham, whose total profession – each as a rider then as a efficiency engineer – has centred on optimising bikes, tools and riders to make them sooner, disagrees.
“Speed is not decided by gear ratios. It’s decided by enter energy divided by drag. Limiting gear ratios will not assist if you wish to gradual races down,” he wrote in an Instagram story.
The physics of it
Examining Van Aert’s idea utilizing a gear calculator, the logic is considerably comprehensible, however as we’ll focus on, there are many caveats and loopholes to contemplate.
Using a cadence of 130 RPM (revolutions per minute) – a tough higher restrict for street cyclists – a gear ratio of 53T x 11T and 28c tyres would create a wheel velocity of 80km/h. This is quick, however not past the realms of professional riders on descents, the place they sometimes hit 100km/h. Increase the chainring to a 62T – a measurement utilized by Josh Tarling on the 2024 Paris Roubaix – and the wheel velocity at 130RPM could be 93.6km/h.
Of course, Tarling’s chainring alternative was primarily for drivetrain effectivity slightly than top-end velocity, because the much less a series must articulate round a hoop, the decrease the friction is within the system. There are additionally no descents quick sufficient at Paris-Roubaix to facilitate using – not to mention attacking – at 93km/h. Doing so on the flat would require roughly 3000 watts (or about 1200 watts greater than a peak Mark Cavendish dash) for a lone street rider, assuming a CdA (Coefficient of drag x Area) of 0.3m².
But on a descent of round 80km/h, whereas many riders could be hitting 130 RPM and near spinning out of their highest gear, Tarling would, on this theoretical situation, be at round 115 RPM and have the ability to proceed pedalling, enabling him so as to add energy and probably transfer up by means of a bunch, and even assault.
Loopholes and lever mechanics
A motorcycle’s most gear ratio is a mixture of the dimensions of the chainring and the smallest sprocket on the cassette on the rear. A 62 x 11 mixture is 150 gear inches – an estimate of how far a bicycle goes for one flip of the pedals.
An analogous gear inch could be achieved utilizing a 56-tooth chainring with a 10-tooth sprocket – 56 x 10 – or perhaps a 51 x 9 mixture – each of which can be found in the marketplace. So limiting chainring sizes to “56 or 54”, per Froome’s suggestion, would not be efficient if riders have been nonetheless free to shrink their cassettes.
What’s extra, Team Picnic PostNL’s sprinter, Fabio Jakobsen, was fast to level out the loopholes that riders might discover. In an interview with Patrick Brunt he drew specific consideration to crank size.
“If you restrict the gears, a loophole to that’s riders going for shorter cranks.”
Power is a mixture of cadence and torque, and torque is a mixture of power, lever size (on this case, the crank) and kit. Basic lever mechanics tells us that longer cranks require much less power to push the identical gear, so by the identical logic, a better gear paired with a shorter crank and the identical power would make for comparable torque, and thus comparable energy at a continuing cadence.
Rejecting the idea
When talking to Cyclingnews, Von Folsach, who has a historical past as a professional rider, and has since labored to optimise the Danish observe staff and Uno X Mobility, shut down Froome and Van Aert’s argument matter-of-factly:
“I do not suppose it is an excellent means of accelerating security. I assume their logic is that it might lower velocity, however relying on how excessive they might wish to do that, I do not suppose it is a very efficient means of reducing velocity. I believe they’re possibly overlooking some elements of how one can maintain energy excessive whereas proscribing the gearing ratio.”
Power is a mixture of cadence multiplied by torque, and he factors out that “should you implement it to the diploma the place it really would restrict the velocity, by considerably limiting the rider’s skill to use energy, you’d fully have modified biking.”
“The RPM of the riders would, in all non-climbing eventualities, be a lot, a lot larger; one thing I believe may be mentioned how secure [this] is.”
The aero drag at 90 or 100km/h is so important too that in most conditions, these speeds are solely hit whereas freewheeling and tucking (making your frontal space as small as potential, therefore the recognition of the tremendous tuck, which was banned in 2021). And it is this aero drag on which Bigham centres his argument.
“If you genuinely wish to scale back speeds (and I do not suppose that’s what biking must do to enhance security) then improve drag,” Von Folsach continues, earlier than actually driving residence his level by ending his publish by saying: “Louder once more for these within the again – LIMITING GEARS WON’T HELP!”
Von Folsach additionally raises an fascinating parallel with the not too long ago eliminated restriction on junior gearing. “Looking to junior racing pre- and post-gear restrictions, it might be fascinating to have some crash information. [This is] not one thing I’m sitting on, however taking a look at their speeds pre-gear reactions, I believe it is clear to see that you would be able to go very quick with comparatively strict gear restrictions.”
Detracting from the actual subjects
“I believe deal with this ought to be spent elsewhere,” the Dane continues. “This might, for instance, be course design and inspection and closure to minimise crashes, medical response in case of accidents, or the addition of expertise that truly improves security in case of crashes, [such as] monitoring of riders to know the place they’re and significant important info, and possibly stuff that lessens the impression of crashes. For instance clothes with built-in crash safety, airbag expertise or one thing.”
Drost’s pragmatic method agrees:
“There are quite a lot of issues we will say and/or enhance about rider security,” he instructed Cyclingnews. “Reducing gears might be one in every of them, however I believe we must always begin in analysing/investigating what’s unsafe at this second. I believe there are quite a lot of elements which can lead to unsafe using circumstances and with out clearly analysing or summarising these we’re capturing blanks. Speed could make the crash extra extreme, however is velocity the explanation for the crash?”
Jakobsen too highlighted this as a extra essential space of concern:
“What we do have to take a look at is the protection of finishes and the kind of parcours, but in addition the principles amongst dash races.”
Speaking in a current interview with Bike Radar, Bigham agreed that spotlight ought to be focussed elsewhere, citing “unsafe roads, unsafe tools, and poor, insufficient or gradual medical response when the worst does occur” as the first points.
He additionally raised his personal novel concept for slowing down the peloton: growing the UCI’s 6.8kg weight restrict on bikes.
“I believe growing the load restrict does quite a lot of different issues. It lets you carry these extra sensors, extra methods, have a safer bike round elements of security, and simply design bikes which can be a bit more healthy for function.
“There are a number of concepts and plenty of issues you are able to do, however they [often] take weight and weight is a goal, and should you’re nowhere close to the restrict then individuals are by no means going to be incentivised to do it until they’re regulated to.”
He even took intention at weight weenie bottle cages, blaming poor bottle retention for inflicting crashes. “[The UCI could] simply regulate them – make them 50g – which is well achievable and the retention will go up.
“Or we simply have a clasp mechanism so [bottles are] locked in place. I guess that may lower out 10, 20 crashes a yr.”