Yes, “win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” The reason company X puts pros on bike X is so that company X can sell more bikes.
Yep, the racing and industry big wigs decided the diamond frame was a “real” bike and left out recumbents.
The temptation is to optimize one parameter at the expense of all others. Yes, we could optimize the sanctity of past records by freezing bicycle innovation, or we could allow fairings and optimize current speeds. The rule makers are trying to find a workable solution with many different parameters. There’s much more to competition than keeping a level playing field for the past record holders. Everyone knows that the old timers set their records on worse equipment, with less knowledge of training, with less focus on one particular record. It’s a common pastime to wonder what such and so would have done if they competed today.
Or how about Cavendish tying Mercx for the tour win record? Since every competitor has the same access to tech, the records should be comparable, right? But mercx won all kinds of stages, kicked butt all year, and Cav is a sprint specialist. The riders are very different, and their 34 wins are very different, but that’s the record they share.