downtube42

Back in the day, things were different.

Fix your own fork

https://www.welovecycling.com/wide/2...the-1913-tour/

rebel1916

Confidently incorrect

rsbob 

If you speak with confidence and repeat it enough times, some people will believe virtually anything.

philbob57

The bike and other equipment were factors in the 1989 TdF, but LeMond's victory required a lot more than new aerodynamic equipment and an unusal bike.

So far, it looks like all equipment in most bike racing represents some sort of compromise. Someone has to choose which compromises to make for every race or stage of a stage race. If that someone makes the right choices for the conditions that actually occur, that bike will have advantages over other bikes. Winning always has elements of chance. Someone can always say, 'Should have ..., Could have ..., Would have....'

UCI could, of course, require the same bike for all riders, but that would work only if all the riders are of the same size and proportions. Even then some riders are likely to like the chosen equipment more than other riders do, and that is likely to affect performance.

What bugs me is that today's pros ride up mountains faster than I ride down what passes for hills around here. But consider this: I never raced against any pro, so who is to say who would have won? I had a hard time keeping up with my GS 2 weeks ago, so I know who I'd bet on, though.

If everything is fully equalized, every race will end with every rider having the same equalized time. Hell, even DNF can be 'equalized' away, at least in some theory....

3alarmer 

himespau 

This dude named Juan Pelota once said, "it's not about the bike, it's about all the drugs", though I'm not sure he said the last part out loud.

Maelochs

Ummmm .... No? Yeah, I guess, if the Riders could be equalized ..... how would that work? How would the human body and grain b "equalized"? Riders can be completely different on two different days. And in Grands Tours, riders work differently on different stages. How would the UCI "equalizer" a rider who was in long, fast breakaways on seven flat stages with riders who went all-out on mountaintop finishes for two stages, with riders who sprinted really hard for one stage?

If every Bike were equalized .... well, that is the effect the UCI seeks. Sure, a team can choose an aero or a climbing frame, deep-disc or shallow rims, disc- or rim brakes .... but the bikes all have to meet a fairly high minimum weight and have basically similar frames.

The benefit there is that the pharmacists, i mean the riders, determine the outcome, not the machinery.

Of course, team budgets determine a whole to as well .... and the UCI cannot mandate minimum or maximum budgets ... like some auto-racing series used to pretend to do .... can you imagine the rampant cheating when you told the accountants and tax attorneys that they could go nuts to help win races?

But yes ... the UCI wants the ndividual riders, or the teams, and their human performances, to determine who wins.

That includes the riders, the trainers the directeurs sportifs .... but the idea is a level playing field where humans can use their bike racing abilities to win or lose races.

Maelochs

Harrison Bergeron would have been too tall and heavy to succeed in UCI-sanctioned racing.

Kapusta

So if all the bikes are exactly the same, how would you decide what size they should all be?

Pearson100

For The Little 500 competion at Indiana University (the race that inspired the movie "Breaking Away"), all racers use the same model singlespeed Schwinn bicycle. Some modifications are allowed but must conform to certain limitations.

https://www.schwinnbikes.com/blogs/c...owl-of-cycling