Originally Posted by
pierrej
I'd imagine it wasn't necessarily the width that was the limiting factor, more the available hand position for the sling. Most of the narrower bars tend to be sprint oriented and obviously slope away from the clamp area, the alpina have more of this than most other narrow bars.
Also without any negative connotations, the bars are comparitively bigger for the women using them than they would be for their male counterparts.
This. Wider bars are actually a disadvantage in a madison exchange.