Another stupid question on bike racing.....

[Panter]

On the telly I mean.

Ok, when they're doing a TT stage they generally wear the aero helmet and use TT bikes.

So, if they're that much faster, why don't they use TT bikes for road racing, or at least the aero helmets or the aero bars?

 

[alecstilleyedye]

you can't use disk wheels or aero bars in a group for safety reasons. the wind could catch a disk wheel and blow you into the other riders, and aero bars don't usually have brakes reachable from the aero position.

the tt bike would probably be too uncomfortable to ride for hours at a stretch, whereas a tt is never usually much more than a couple of hours.

aero helmets are for aerodynamics only, and are not crash helmets, which are required to be worn during mass-start races.

hope that clears things up…

 

[yenrod]

Panter 'the style', of the racing is different - different position.

A TT bike is FAST where-as a Roady bike is mix of quite a few positions ie Fast, Climbing, TT, Sprinting...

 

[Panter]

Makes perfect sense, thanks guys

 

[fossyant]

TT bikes don't handle as well - tighter geometry, so don't corner. Also weight isn't much of an issue, unless it's a hilly TT like in the Giro, where everyone had road bikes - but there were loads of riders saying they should have had MTB's.....it took 40 minutes or so to do 12 km - now that is hard going !