This week, Colnago launched its new aero bike, which will be ridden by Tadej Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates:
Now, I should say from the outset that I don’t like this bike.
I LOVE IT.
Wait, what?
[Sound of phonograph needle scraping across record grooves as it’s hastily removed, intern get on that would you?]
Okay, fine, as a proponent of traditional bikes at first glance this is everything I’m against. For example, my own Italian racing bike has shifters like these:
Meanwhile, this is a computer-controlled lump of plastic with proprietary everything:
And one could buy several timelessly exquisite Italian road bikes for the price of the “frame kit” alone:
See?
Though the truly wise investment for the discerning road bicyclist with over six thousand EuroBux™ (or its regional equivalent) to spend would be to buy one timeless Italian bike, one ultra-comfy lugged Rivendell Roadini, and then blow the rest of the money on fancy dinners.
Setting that aside, the reason I love the new Colnago is that I hope it represents the point at which professional racing bicycles and sporty bikes for “normal” people are finally going their separate ways once and for all. This would be a very good thing. The more I think about it, pro race bikes should be high-tech, quasi-experimental cutting-edge machines. I mean why the hell not? It’s about riding a bicycle as fast as possible, right? If you want to see purely human speed-based competition then watch people running.
Instead, the UCI has tried to keep the bikes “traditional.” We of course saw this in the late ’90s, when they declared that road racing bicycles “shall be of a traditional pattern, i.e. built around a main triangle,” and they banned bikes like the Wife Oil:
Sure, this meant that our sporting heroes continued to ride bicycles with classic silhouettes. But competition being what it is, it also meant designers continued to pursue every possible advantage while remaining within those confines. So 20 years later, you wind up with this:
Sure, it has a diamond frame, but is it somehow more true to the idea of the traditional bicycle than the Y-Foil was? I would argue that it is not. Meanwhile, all those “advantages” make their way down the line, and while the UCI may require a “traditional pattern” it now also allows discs brakes, so today even a mid-level road bike is all carbon and integrated and electronic and hydraulic…
…all of which is perfectly fine if that’s what you’re after, but if it’s not your alternatives are rapidly diminishing.
So here we are at the Colnago:
Never has the “traditional pattern” ruse been more apparent than it is now. What is the UCI clinging to here? Why is no seat tube illegal but relocating it entirely and transforming it into a cowl for the rear wheel is perfectly legal? Just cut design loose and let it fly for chrissakes! Let pro bikes and normal bikes diverge! Of course there will still be people who want to ride exotic pro replica superbikes and are willing to pay for them, and the companies who make them can continue to sell them (indeed, as it is they’re required to sell them). But if those were to continue to grow exponentially more extreme in price or design due to a relaxing of the rules, maybe everything else would sort of stabilize, with only the innovations that truly make sense trickling down to the “normal” bikes. I try to refrain from facile bike/car comparisons, but McLaren sells something like 5,000 cars a year worldwide across all its models, whereas Mazda sells twice as many Miatas in the US alone. Alas, even superbikes are a lot cheaper and more accessible than cars, so bike companies can try to make all their bikes into McLarens. But maybe if we untether bike design at the pro level we’ll finally get more Miatas–you know, fun roadsters normal middle-aged balding men can actually live with.
Or maybe this has already happened and this is what gravel bikes are, I dunno.
Still, I can’t help thinking that if the UCI were more permissive, you could appreciate a badass bike like this without also having to worry that every other bike will start looking like it too, and that in 10 years even entry-level road bikes will have proprietary water bottle systems:
[From here.]
But maybe I’m too trusting.