Originally Posted by
Ferrouscious
Crap engineering team. A seatpost design that self destructs and handlebars that snap under heavy load. Nice.
Matthieu van der Poel hit a car with that handlebar days before the race. He/the mechanic chose not to change it out. Bad call. Canyon is pulling out all the stops on damage control. Good for them but if those bars were changed out as they should have been, it might well be that all the others out there are just fine.
I'm not a fan of carbon but this is a case of the team not respecting carbon for what it is. A strong, very light material that doesn't like impacts and can suffer hidden damage. Hitting a car, then racing over cobbles? Nahh. Now the team didn't spend, what?, $100 replacing the bar (plus an hour of two of labor), Canyon is going to step up and replace a pile of handlebars. Probably take a hit on sales as well. (That mechanic might get a quiet talking to next time the Canyon rep is over.)
Edit: The CyclingNews article:
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/can...#disqus_thread