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UCI rules not OK |
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I've just seen the latest UCI restrictions on racing bicycles. Fortunately not mountain bikes. Our skinny tyred skinny bodied brethren. But what I've seen worries me. The UCI is trying to eliminate the technology from road racing. After Chris Boardman won the Olympics on that bike they're worried that people will judge the bike not the rider. Don't be stupid. The man on the Clapham omnibus knows that the bike makes no difference. It's the quality of your drugs. The size of your pharmaceutical budget. Tour De France 1998 and all that. Never mind the bad boys of downhilling and the lager fuelled frenzies that wind up the UCI. Did that ever make the mainstream press? No. Instead we mountain bikers get lumped in with and tarred with the same brush as the roadies and their horse doctors. Which is why I can't understand the UCI clamping down on the technology. Sure they're having a go at the drugs. But until they've got that sorted out I reckon they should leave the technology well alone. A modern racing bike would look familiar to the riders of the early 20th century. The bicycle designers of the late 19th century would have been appalled at the stagnation in design that bicycles suffered for 80 years. They tinkered with frame materials and shapes, transmission methods, tyres, and even suspension in a way that children of the mountain bike era think of as perfectly natural. They would applaud the inventiveness of todays mountain bike designers. The actions of the UCI would probably horrify John Kemp Starley who, in 1885, produced the first safety with all the attributes of the modern bicycle. If the UCI had been so draconian back in the late 19th century we'd still all be riding high wheelers and Starley would have been out of a job. Which is why I'm afraid. I'm afraid that they'll turn to mountain biking next. Unlike road racing the drugs don't count for much in mountain biking. Sure you have to be fit to compete at the top level. But the skill and technology count for more than they do on the road. Just take a roadie to your local singletrack if you don't believe me. The Sports class is full of fit blokes who whip round the fireroads, then fall off in the woods. But the UCI can't clamp down on skill, so technology it is. Should I be worried while their attention is distracted by drug scandals? Yes I should. Track riding is hardly the biggest branch of the sport. But look at how they leapt on Graham Obree and his home made bike when he made the mistake of giving the sport some much needed publicity. It only takes one blazer to wake up to the popularity of mountain biking on TV and we could be doomed. So what if every bike I own is rigid? That doesn't mean I won't want something more exotic in the future. And I'd like people to be able to develop that bike restricted only by cost and marketplace considerations. Ever wondered why we don't see many carbon monocoques on the road. It's not because of any UCI restriction. It's because of the free market. July 1999.
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