Yesterday’s disastrous fall during the tour of the Basque Country, which involved cycling big names such as Vingegaard, Evenepol and Roglic, cannot be attributed to a single element or a single cause. This is the summary opinion of Guido Rubino, founder of the technical site Cyclinside.it. In a conversation with Adnkronos, Rubino – who had already analyzed the group’s downhill fall at around 80 mph yesterday – focuses on the main suspect: modern racing bikes and the riding styles they favor. “Compact and very rigid frames – he says -, high profile wheels, increasingly higher average speeds, perhaps even some excessive risk due to the greater confidence that riders have today with disc brakes, which leads them to brake only at the last moment: all this can contribute to episodes of this kind, which are certainly not new but always worrying.”
The debate on the incident, which is not exactly trivial given that it involves top cyclists at the very beginning of the grand tour season, is focusing on the mechanical part of the collective crash; for the moment, the riding ability of professionals at that level is not in question, as they are able to change shirts and even socks while pedaling at speeds that seem record-breaking to normal cyclists. “There is also a problem of organization and protection”: in the video of the fall you can clearly see a sort of safety barrier installed at the beginning of the dangerous point of the curve and not where it could actually be most useful. Focusing instead on the vehicles, the most relevant difference today is “that many prefer compact frames with a tighter steering angle”. Compact, or undersized, frames are the most popular because “the cyclist has a more reactive vehicle, but at the same time it becomes more difficult to ride”.
High profile wheels, with rims over 50 mm deep, are more aerodynamic than low profile ones “but the wheel becomes excessively rigid; a wheel that flexes minimally when cornering downhill at 80 mph, ‘ accompanies the man-machine combination. Not the more rigid one, with the possibility of sudden ‘counter-steering’, which combines with the tighter steering angle. The bike can run away from you.” Not to mention large section frames and especially high profile rims are more affected by air movement. “The front wheel matters much more than the rear, in fact lately some professionals use rims with a moderate profile at the front and a high profile at the rear because the rear does not affect the direction.”
Finally, the materials: ‘carbon is much more rigid than traditional metal bikes, which absorb vibrations and bumps’: another contribution to possible falls. As for the tyres, which now have a large section and use materials such as graphene which they give grip that was unthinkable only twenty years ago, “it doesn’t seem to me that they play a particular role. However, the images of Tesfasion, the first to fall yesterday, suggest a sudden drop in front pressure, perhaps a puncture, which may have caused the bike to countersteer, causing him to fall”. From the video, although blurry, it is clear that the The Eritrean from Lidl-Trek didn’t even touch the brake lever. Not to mention, Rubino finally notes, that “riders are led, due to extreme positions, to ride even downhill with their hands held high, and this makes it less easy to control”, thus also taking part of the responsibility for falls.
(by Paolo Bellino)
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