LarrySellerz

lol its easy to do this and thats part of the appeal.. its much easier to do this than a move in the cassette where you would have to move like 3 cogs to get the same effect. Also moving down gears is easier than moving up.

Koyote

These guys would like to have a word with you.

N2deep

I still appreciate triples. Due to a lack of a solid triple with a respectable granny and the hills of Pittsburgh I switched my compact to a sub compact. Yes, larger cassettes are available but who wants one the size of a dinner plate. Bring back Triples!

Fredo76

I just added a third chainring to my classic crankset, using a tripilizer, to get Geezer-Appropriate Gearing (GAG). A 42/22 was low enough when I was a teenager, but not 45 years later on, for me at least. The surprising thing was how little fiddling was involved. I didn't need a longer spindle, the 28T cog had just enough clearance, my stock Suntour Cyclone front derailleur had plenty of range, and the drop down from the 42 to the 28 is the most reliable shift on the bike.

Carbonfiberboy 

Eh? That's easy. What's hard is going the other way. One has to spin the granny up and then ease off to upshift the front.

What's unique about a triple is the very close gearing one can have at the low end. In fact as one ages, one doesn't immediately get a bigger cassette, one gets a smaller granny. On long climbs it makes a huge difference to be able to keep one's cadence within one's preferred range.

All my bikes have triples.

But to address the OP, it's like this: We live in a caste society. The following is oversimplified, but you'll get the idea. The lowest caste is called "consumers." That would be us. We buy stuff and that's our only purpose. The next caste up is called "manufacturers" (makers). They built your bikes. Their only concern is profit. The top caste is "financiers." They provide money for manufacturers only if it will give the financier the greatest return on investment. The upper castes have decided that they make more money if they don't make triples. Done. The marketing ploy is that the 3rd ring weighs so much that racers would never use one so you shouldn't have one. Now you know.

Symox

I live near hills and regularly use all of my gear range each ride

i love having a triple
1x drivetrains are simple but I miss the tight steps of a triple

once dialed in, triples can be fantastic

LesterOfPuppets

I love triples. Especially with a 13-26 in back. Tasty gears.

LarrySellerz

wait the fall of tripples is a weight weenie thing? That makes sense I guess

PeteHski

Can you at least learn how to spell triple!

PeteHski

The alternative view is that there simply isn't enough overall demand for triples anymore to make them commercially viable. Mountain bikers are not interested in triples anymore, so that's a big market for triples gone almost overnight. Most roadies prefer doubles anyway and now you have wide-range 12-speed cassettes, demand for a triple has become pretty niche. I can see the appeal for some tourers, but I guess there aren't enough of them to interest the manufacturers.

LarrySellerz

There is only 1 p in tripple? I thought spellcheck was trolling me

LarrySellerz

do roadies like not go up steep hills? lower than a 1 to 1 ratio helps in lots of steep situations

Racing Dan

The best thing about a triple is you avoid constantly shifting rings in mid speed applications, where with a wide double you are constantly changing rings, with associated compensation shifts and cross chaining into small/small or big/big.

seypat

It's not a weight weenie thing. Through the years when both a double and triple version was available within a groupset, I weighed both. If the 2x has 30t or more on the back to match the same range of the 3x, the triple is the lighter option. In fact, those 1x systems with the huge pie plate rear clusters aren't really saving any weight either. One of the reasons is you can usually get by without a LC RD on the 3x setup.

seypat

You can also ride loops of 3- 5 rear sprockets on 2 rings instead of having to go all around on your rear cluster.

PeteHski

1:1 or lower ratios are not that unusual on modern 2x or 1x drivetrains. They are all a compromise in one way or another.

tomato coupe

Trippple has 3 p's ... of course.

t2p

this ^

especially with the availability of 11t cog (and smaller) and when paired with a crank with downsized chainrings (compact / 'micro-drive')

years ago a number guys I knew riding the road with triples switched to wide-range cog sets w / 11t small cog and cranks (doubles) with smaller chainrings

they had low gearing for climbing and still had a good top gear

indyfabz

What’s good for the goose….

Carbonfiberboy 

Way back in time, say the early 2000s, in the largest bike club in the country, there were two competing hard group rides. We competed for riders by offering the hardest, most fun routes we could think of. These weren't racer boys, just club riders, the fastest of the 10,000 of us. Every rider I knew in these sub-groups had a triple even though most manufacturers offered double and triple models, so you either had a 53-39 and were a racer boy or girl who did crits or you had a 52-42-30 (Shimano) and were a club rider.

And that's why I've never bought a new bike since 2000 - by the time I would have bought one, triples were gone and it drove me nuts riding with people with compacts, who were forever shifting and dropping back on my wheel. Didn't want that. Yesterday, I did my first pass ride of the season, 4700' of gain. My low gear in 2000 was a 30/25 and is now a 26/30 which I used quite a bit on this climb. I had gear-inches of 22.8, 26.3, and 29.7 in the granny, next gear up was middle ring at 34.2. On the way down, I held the wheel of a companion tandem in my 53/11 at 30-40 mph, always able to pedal back on if I fell back a bit. That's why I continue to ride a triple. My bike weighs 18.5 lbs., but having the right gear easily makes up for a little extra weight. I lost 1.5 lbs. on the ride anyway. Need to do that more often.

What replaced the triple? The compact. Why were no compacts made before? Because no one would want one. Why have an inferior drivetrain like that which neither climbs nor descends as well? The bike industry took a step back with the only goal being standardization and increased profits.

I get it that strong riders on BF can console themselves with the imaginary virtues of compacts. Just you wait.

The MTB triple was a separate animal, no connection to the road triple other than the number 3. 1X is viable for the MTB because there generally are no smooth gradients like we see on roads built for vehicles.

There was a huge market for triples - almost everyone who had a relatively new bike had one and would have bought another. I'm talking about back when serious club riders bought a new bike, they bought custom steel or TI with a triple. I was the first rider I knew to buy carbon, hence my screen name. The majority of road riders in my area were simply dropped cold by the industry. That said, there are benighted parts of this country which don't have a lot of good hills to ride. We feel sorry for them. They can ride doubles, but should have 53-39, not silly compacts.

Fredo76

With Big Gravel telling us what to demand, this is what happens. The decision was evidently made. Those of us who want a wide range AND close spacing are SOL.

PeteHski

I've been riding since the early 80s and never had a road bike with a triple chainset. I guess they just weren't popular over here or I totally missed them! Touring bikes had them, so I guess that was the market here.
My current road bikes both have compact doubles, 11 and 12-speed. I have zero interest in a triple now, but I could see the point when I only had a 5-speed cassette back in the day!

surak

Shrug. With initially 10 and now 11 speeds in the back, I've never felt the need for an extra chainring on my road bikes. Looking at the Di2 stats of my last two fast group rides using compact chainrings with a 11-32t cassette, both 17 mph avg over hilly roads with no climbs taking longer than 10 minutes: 50 front shifts needed over 90 miles with 4900 ft elevation gain and 42 mph max speed, 48 front shifts needed over 67 miles with 5000 ft elev gain and 43 mph max speed. No cross-chaining for me; I like to keep a straight chainline and Di2 won't go into small-small anyway.

For road cycling in hilly places, not touring, I put forth that 2x subcompact chainrings or 1x with giant cogs make more sense for slower/less experienced riders than more chainrings. The former because I rarely see people in the slower groups pushing it downhill, the latter because I see a lot of people simply not understanding when they need to shift the front at all.

seypat

How many rear shifts of 3-8 cogs? A lot of those can be eliminated with 2 shifts of the front or 1 front and a couple of rear with a 3x. Bear in mind we're talking about terrain with great variation. Not talking about rollers where you nibble along parts of the cassette. It depends on what's important to each rider.

xroadcharlie

Even an 8 speed 13 - 34 cassette w/42T chainring provides a 33 - 87 gear inch range. That would cover a lot of territory for most folks. My 2018 bike came with a tripple chainring, But I didn't buy the bike for that, If it came with the gearset in my example, I would have been just as happy. I found I can work with the standard gears on most bikes, Its just a matter of taking advantage of the benifets of each gearset.