What’s Going On With Pro Cyclists Gearing? | GCN Tech Show 321

What is going on with pro cyclists gearing? Why are their chain rings always massive now? There are some new mega-expensive wheels, SRAM has a solar charging patent, KMC has developed a budget-friendly cassette AND there is HOPE that the bike industry is recovering!

Welcome 0:00
Main talking point 0:38
Hot and spicy tech 11:11
Paton’s Patent Patrol 13:11
A glimmer of hope for bike industry 17:26
Comment of the week 18:48
Bike vault 22:50

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Welcome to the gcn tech show this week we’re discussing what is going on with Pro cyclists gearing why are they always massive now we also have some out of this world expensive Wheels sham have filed a solar charging patent KMC have developed a budget friendly cassette and

There also appears to be a glimmer of hope that the bike industry is recovering from its postco crash Payton’s patent Patrol can’t wait we also have hot Tech on the bike fault so what is going on with the chain rings that the pros using they all seem

To be massive now yeah so this is something that I saw the tore down under at the start of this year something we’ve observed in previous years when we’ve gone to bike racing and just generally seems to be evolving a little bit over time with Pro races yeah the

Thing to point out here is this isn’t just time trial chain rings talking about cuz they big time trial dinner plates you know 60 to chain Rings used by the likes of filipo Gana they’ve been around for quite a long time now and we sort of understand that there’s the

Whole thing about optimizing your chain line and all that sort of stuff but we’re noticing now in just all Races even races that are hilly and going up hills they’re using much bigger Rings So Pro gears seem to have got much larger but conversely amateur gears seem to

Have got a little bit smaller so how come we’ve ended up in this situation so typically in the past you know Pros ran 5339 chain rings and that’s why they were called standard gearing yeah um and and that was what they did and then bike brands created uh 5034 the compact chain

Set which was designed to be easier gears for amateurs every Rider yes um however now that like well all the brands have switched to 12 speed you look at say Shimano yeah that 5339 isn’t really available at 12 I can’t yeah I don’t think it exists um

What you do see though is they’re selling a 5440 yeah and that’s become a much more popular chain set for professional Riders yeah I think that’s the route that shiman have gone down right so they’ve offered that smaller chaming size for what’s deemed to be amateur Riders and other brands have followed

Suit remember a few years back Ram decided that they wanted to shrink everything down smaller chain Rings smaller cassettes and then more recently campag seemed to have falled suit with that but if we go back a few years you can go back to nearly 2016 when we saw Pros experimenting with larger

Chambering sizes we had Garren Thomas didn’t we 2016 201 par um yeah The Descent was coming out the back of EZ Village down into nice and he thought he might get attacked and dropped by contador on the climb he did and so he he thought oh I’m going to put on a

Massive chain ring so that I can pedal on The Descent and pursuit back on um which he did but it was only a 54 but I remember at the time putting a 54 on on what was a pretty early stage was was newsworthy but now a lot of them are

Running that standard if not bigger yeah I think we’re seeing like we’ve got here mads pedison appears to have like a 56 on his 43 as a standard on his road bike yeah and that’s running sham um and I spoke to uh Connor Swift yeah from inos

And and you know he was saying that he often has just the 54 on but for like that would be his standard so if he was going into the mountains he’d run the 54 but but run yeah but then um but then on flat days or Sprint day or

Classics 55 56 cuz the sort of argument is that well and just purely by the way the gears work if you have a massive chaming at the front the the inner chaming still has to be considerably larger cuz you you kind have that huge jump between them yeah but the question

Is like you know okay we’ve observed this and this isn’t just those guys then we haven’t picked isolated examples these bigger chain rings are now and demic throughout um the pro pelaton but the question is why okay like why are we seeing much bigger chain Rings now well I mean common sense says

It’s purely down to speeds of bike races right so we’ve said this before over recent years bike racing is just getting faster and faster and faster so with that Concept in mind the racing is getting faster you’re going to need gears that are going to enable you to

Ride faster surely yeah I think like if you look at the tour to France is like is a good yard stick isn’t it the average speed of the last two tours to France was um 43 kph average in 2022 and like 41 or 42 kph average in like last

Year 2023 39 km out in 2010 we see an upward Trend here yeah so yeah 39 in in 2010 and there are things that affect it because the the amount of climbing in the race differs a lot and all the rest of it but you do if you plot everything

You see a general Trend you know in the 80s it was like 38 kph average and and and so on so it what you’re seeing there is is technology making the racing faster because well I mean if you’re cynical and you say other things are making the racing faster than well

There’s that’s always happening as well but the point is is the racing is getting faster um and technology is playing a part because you know we have far more aerodynamic bikes more aerodynamic Wheels more aerodynamic clothing more aerodynamic all the stuff that we just ties rolling resistance all

Stu we was bang on about basically it all does add up and you know so I did a little bit of research this morning whil you probably still fast asleep because I wake up early and research these things um one Toth extra on a chain ring on a

28 mm Tire equates to appr approximately 1.1 km hour higher higher speed for the same Cadence so 53 to 54 you’re going to go one 1.1 km hour like faster so you can like follow the you can almost follow the chain ring size up with the TR traduction can’t get the word out

That the speeds have increased yeah it’s there is a problem though yeah so it’s all good and well having the faster race speeds yeah and then having these bigger chain Rings it’s all great until you get to a hill because then your bigger chain ring does become it’s the problem for

Everyone in life I think you get to a hill yeah but then the other thing that we’ve then seen that’s allowed for these sort of bigger chain rings to happen is again and and the pros are a great example of this is the widespread adoption of bigger cassettes yeah so

Shimano 12 speed great example you know they have pretty much just two cassettes that they tend to sell the most they have the 1130 yeah and they have the 1134 on your a um and the pros are pretty much running that 1134 cassette all of the time now because it just it’s

You know I mean I have it on you’ve run it as well yeah like it’s such a great all round cassette because it’s it’s kind of like having an 1130 11 speed cassette but then you’ve just got that extra one on the end yeah it’s just meaning that you haven’t got those huge

Jumps between the gears and that’s when you feel like you don’t quite have the gear that you want so I’ve actually also done some research on how other gearing has affected the speed just to look at say climbing gears right so go back a handful of years to whenever we deeming

That the so-called standard chain set was a thing 39 in a ring most people would have had a 28 Toth cassette in that kind of era say 15 years ago say um at 855 RPM that’s a speed of 15.1 km an hour right now if we look at the gear in

That we’re saying the larger chamber rings but because it’s tied in with that big cassette 42 chain ring on the front 34 at the back 85 RPM 12.8 km an hour so they’re getting that increased range of going slower and faster yeah so they’ve got a bigger gear range now even with

Those monster chain sets but it means that they can go a lot faster on descents and stuff I think all I think another valid point is you know descending speeds have got a lot faster if you watch old like races you know we’re talking like Greg lamond Mardo ER

The way in which they descend is is different in like Mountain stages compared to now well not just not just well no disc braks do play a part but also you know the breaks that they had back then were pants like I’ve ridden these old bikes down Hills and they were pants and

So you can just see the speeds at which they’re going and they they weren’t wearing helmets you know and the speeds at which they’re going on the desense is a lot less compared to say you know pitcock when he attacked in the tour and you know that too allow is somewhere

Where you will utilize a bigger chain ring yeah I’m with you on that um but the other thing we need to mention is that while the pro gears have got bigger the gears that are often sold to the public have got smaller so you know you

Look at um like the well SRAM and campanola offering say 48 tooth chain Rings instead of the the 52 yeah I think it’s a case that is an improvement for the consumer I’m going to say so bikes that are generally sold to the public now I feel are supplied with far more appropriate

Gearing for the type of Rider that is going to be buying it you know we’ve talked about 5339 however many years ago the majority of people let’s face it that probably wasn’t the optimal cassette and chain ring size for them yeah I think that’s true I think the

Chain rings are good for um like you know mortal Riders but what I would like to see is the likes of sham and Shimano supplying the bigger cassette option so it seems that when you buy like aam a 12-speed group set the standard cassette that comes with a bike is the

1030 and the standard cassette that comes on Shimano is the 1130 but they both well sham have what the 1033 and Shimano have the 1034 well you go 105 you got 36 well yeah but I feel that that bigger cassette should be the standard option cuz I just feel that in

Every case that’s the much more versatile unless you live somewhere really flat yeah they’re so much more versatile they just you know you don’t have to worry about ever changing your cassette out you know they just do it all there’s also this other sort of

Element I want to add in which are just pure speculation here if manufacturers make gears smaller which means it’s better for people to ride at slower speeds it conversely well it kind of helps reduce the weight overall the group set as well like it’s like an additional selling point it’s like now

Lighter than it used to be if You’ been a weight we yeah the the 11:30 is a bit lighter than4 bit um well that’s our thoughts on it isn’t it um I think it’d be interesting to hear what kind of gear range people have on their bikes so let

Us know in the comments section down below and as always we can discuss it next week it’s time now for hot Tech and there’s a lot of outrageous stuff out this week right yeah first thing that we’re talking about are these new limited edition lightweight milstein Evo Wheels which

Are basically they out of this world with pricing you just ride up out the zift like 10 times and you get them for free I can’t even afford them in zift let me tell the price first cuz that’s the headline thing here £ 7,699 I can’t believe I’m s saying that

With a straight face okay um but this hear me out here so these wheels are released to pay homage to the company’s founder Hines Oba obame Au I struggle with the name so there’s going to be 99 sets available apply named the AUA Evo signature Gold Edition ition wheels and

I love that this has been mentioned in the press release right to ensure that um people have got a chance to purchase these wheels there’s 33 sets which are going to be distributed between Europe asia/pacific and the Americas so they distributed evenly across the that’s of

Them yeah so they’ve got a gold uh 24 karat gold leaf across the logo wow which I think looks really cool $7,000 worth of gold I’ve done some research on this 24 Karat gold loose leaf 8 cm by 8 cm square 25 sheets £30 right just make

Your own wheels don’t that is yeah that is outrageous the interesting thing about that particular wheel is it still retains that v-shaped crosssection that we now know to be not very good yeah they’ve been renowned for being super lightweight like inos kind of always reverted to those Wheels when they were

In their I don’t know Tor France Heyday light and stiff that’s what they are um 1,000 380 G for the pair 48 mm deep and if you’ve got incredibly Deep Pockets you can go and find them online right solar shifting next right I don’t know much about the solar shifting

Should I should I explain hit us with this oh this is a new Shram patent right yeah so it’s remember Payton’s pton Patrol have to redig that one up um so basically Sile a patent for solar char in to enable you to charge the Sham access batteries on the goat it kind of

Does what it says on the tin right um so it says they could charge between 6 and 8.4 volts in direct sunlight and they’ve got it the patent is showing it either in a bottle cage mount with a solar cells on it or also on a front or rear

Mud guard I think the idea behind kind of looked like a an ass saver yeah it kind of did I think the idea behind it is that you’re charging uh like an additional battery that’s on the bike rather than than charging the one that’s on the deras otherwise the solar charger

Would have to be connected to your deras which kind of defeats the whole point of samam having Wireless gears right yeah so I don’t know I get it if you’re going on big crazy Epic Adventures where you’re going to be in the middle of a desert for like two weeks but if you’re

In the desert for two weeks maybe electronic gears aren’t most suitable for you anyway yeah well it’s interesting though it’s pretty cool that they’re thinking about this I think the fiso electric generated one on the shifter that had a pattern for would be cool I think it’s considerably better than my

Wind powered generator oh I don’t know yeah that was pretty good um do i t a slight bit of sarcasm there no so we we also have another outrageously priced um object yep go on here Asos have unveiled a new skin suit um ahead of the Paris Olympics yeah so

This is important you we’ve spoken about this before there’s this kind of UCI stipulation that the equipment has to be for sale otherwise you can’t use it and it has to be approved by the uci’s equipment commission yeah so asos’s new fenoc skin suit can be yours for

$7,000 how you get it at the same time as getting your wheels imagine if you ripped imagine if you rode that and then you fell off the first time you rode it I don’t want to imagine that I the worst you would I think I would actually cry

Um it’s it’s they’re saying it’s 100% custom I mean you’d hope so um I should point out as well that for that price it is also included in a package where you get overshoes oh go sounds great value now as well um and it’s it’s you know apparently just super super optimized

But I think it’s that classic thing where and we’ve seen this time and time again every time the Olympics comes around you know like the Lotus bike and all the rest of it they they they make make this stuff and then they deliberately overinflate the price like

We spoke about a few shows back with the um uh thing Factor the factor track Factor track bik for the Olympics all brands are doing it I mean fair game if that’s the if that’s way you want to get around the rules such as like because they just don’t want other federations

To buy it yeah it before the games okay well having spoken about some crazy expensive tech let’s talk about something that’s a little bit more friendly price this cassette from KMC o they’ve launched and developed their own cassette like KMC Renown for making chains so now they’ve made a cassette

Which is suitable for like gravel and a large ratio Road cassette I guess how many speeds we talking 11 and 10 so no 12sp speed option yet but you’d assume that’s maybe in the pipeline so like all cassettes out there they’ve optimized the ramps and the shifting sort of pins

And angles for shifting up and down the cassette but the cool thing about it that I think is that it’s priced particularly reasonably $65 I think that’s pretty good right good price for yeah um you’ve got 11 to 42 11 to 50 and in 10 speed you’ve got 1136

And 11:42 so what sort of level is this cassette in terms of like if you were to put it in a group set hierarchy I haven’t got any like information on the weights here but taking the basis of price to be one of the easy ways to categorize products I think it’s towards

The mid budget friendly option so I I I think it’s a good thing to have more options for people basically yeah definitely um what oh I’m trying lost where I am here right finally we need to mention the um yes slight bit of glimmer of hope certainly in the UK for the bike

Industry I think it’s it’s known worldwide the bike industry is having a bit of a tough time isn’t it now whilst initial doom and glue might seem like uh in an article that was published purely on UK bike sales right let me tell you some of the stats um 2023 saw the

Culmination um continuation of the postco downturn the UK cycling Market um falling a further 6% on top of a already 18% decline in 2022 but hear me out there’s hope because that um those stats are looking at the whole bike industry overall if you break that down into road

And gravel bikes they actually saw an increase in sales so what’s the problem mountain bikers mountain bikers drag dragging us down Ro and gravel up we’re fine but um that obviously that’s only UK figures hopefully the biggest growth yeah gravel’s seing 11% growth Road has ining 8% growth in 23 compared to 22

Which I think is a good thing and there’s hope for everybody yeah let’s just hope that’s that’s not just a UK thing and that is part of a wider Trend globally there you go um more hot and spicy Tech next week time now for comments of the week

Um we’re going to begin with some comments under last week’s gcn Tech show uh first one from Peter Slater 7791 um regarding when we were saying about you should just upgrade yourself rather than upgrade your bike um he says is like in the car world where Forum

Posters come on and say what should I upgrade and the answer is always tighten the nut behind the wheel it just made me smile yeah yeah maybe the answer in the bike world is yeah upgrade you first then the bik um at A1 white says the traditional dur Ace chain set you just

Had lying around yeah um the J is it J or jib the J J Alex always makes me laugh I’m glad it made you laugh yeah what’s funny is I’m not bitter about Al Alex sent me a message this week where he had been out in town and he saw like

A random old bik locked up in town and it had a Jor Ace chain set on it and he made a video of it he’s like look I’m not the only one who has j a lying around that’s exactly how I spoke as well it really it hurts him it K yeah

Yeah it hurts me cut me deep yeah anyway moving swiftly on underneath the video we had out the weekend where we were looking at all of the World Tour bikes um Pro weights which I think has done really well loads of people really Keen to hear about the

Weights of the bikes um we had a comment that says Alex suggested in this video that the switch to a 28 mil Tire to a 23 mil Tire in order to save weight but what about the rolling resistance they say I if I remember correctly Josh from

Silka said in one of his videos that gp5 ,000 compared to a GP 4,000 saves you the same amount of energy on a 10% climb as losing 500 G in body weight so weight weeners should also be rolling resistance weenies it’s true there’s no good looking at one aspect in isolation

You got to look at the product overall all the characteristics yeah and that is another like we were on about chain rings in this week’s show but the other big thing is like Pro Tires just getting wider you know we’ve mentioned that before similar thing um um

CBB uh says actually test one of the 7 and2 kilogram bikes of alz with tubeless tires 28 mil versus an old Rim break bike with 25 mil tubular or maybe even 23 mil tubular and compare the times um it a really interesting video um because

A lot of work just to drive there with two bikes just to do that and then drive home I’m up for that I that’s a wicked idea we get we get a bike that is you know 6.8 kilos Rim break bike and then go right let’s do road trip in the

Summer yeah all right fairl I’ll hold you to that you can do the drivein and right underneath our zero friction cycling video where I went to see Adam while I was out in Adelaide from zero friction cycling um couple of comments generally pretty positive some people

Not so pumped on it but whatever Andrew mallister says awesome f effort to keep an interview with Adam to 15 minutes the video editors at gcn meab base have definitely earned their pay with this one he is a talker he is a talker he is a talker but he’s very sort of thorough

In his approach to lube yes not what I was thinking but fair enough next comment airw work says amazing chat Adam is an incredible source of information and such a friendly sincere guy yeah I I’ve in just complete agreement yeah nice to talk about a different subject

With someone as like question if Josh pner is the lube King what position is Adam he’s pretty high status within the world of lube yeah like a reserve King a backup Lord of lube yeah Lord of lube yeah yeah there you gool right uh we’ll go on from that

We’ll go on to S bike Vault um the Bell it’s primed and ready um as always the bike Vault you can play along at home if you um submit your bikes in the upload Link in the description down below and then um well we get to judge them right

Even nice or super nice yes and you can oh yeah you said the links in the pay attention a Lube joke this week first up we have Ron Zilla 86 he got a new bike for Christmas it is a sell R3 o altegra 8,000 on there need some pedals though yeah

You’re not going to get very far any pedals also I can see it’s Christmas cuz he’s got his Christmas lights attached to that tree Bush thing bottle cages match the bike very well I’m big fan of the color I just think get your pedals on it

He’s got tubito tubes in there I think as well no yeah I think he does anyway nice I think this needs a resubmission does it yeah I don’t want to you shouldn’t be propping it up against that shrubbery shrubber right lucky Pierre next we’ll decide if he’s lucky or not with a Scott

Uh foil Rim breake Vision Wheels Metron 55s Town walls um yeah I mean it’s it’s not in the optimum gear but it’s super nice this is one of the early electronic like the first gen Scott foil well and the um di2 external battery oh yeah nice who’s next very clean cassette on

That one uh M Vincent with a draw what is this hang on it’s a bike oh it’s a kago it’s a cyclocross bike oh I’m not sure what model it is um we don’t have that information to hand it that is uh I think I can go

Super nice on that one as well yeah that’s actually really doing tan W tires do it for me every single time well it’s just it’s well presented it’s a good one you happy yeah white bar tape on a cross bike a that’s Brave isn’t it you just re redo it every

Couple of week yeah um Juan monzon is next kandal Rim break what’s going with the sadow angle what are you thinking on the sadow angle um also I they said that they’ve ridden to an open air carbon mine is that not just a open air coal mine I don’t

Know okay anyway um now I can’t really see what going on here also the way the bottle is being used under the wheel yeah unnecessary not happy about this juny angle it’s not well exposed I can’t see anything yeah yeah I think there’s room for improvement on that one nice um

Viges Trek Mone sl6 oh I love the colors of this this is incredible that is a cool that’s got to be one of the custom painted like project on Project ones yeah it’s a good good good color combo I do I do like it I the rear um the rear deria cable

Housing could probably do a cutting down a little bit do you know what there’s a that that wall looks especially abrasive it does actually and the bike is not pushed up against The Handlebar so it means that your B yeah that is just there’s just scratch for scratches

Waiting to happen there if that’s a project one you don’t well that is a super nice bike we can’t give it a super nice cuz we can’t endorse such Behavior no okay such flagrant disregard for for your paint right two left in the B this where you like this next one cuz it’s

Time tral bike Bell soda yeah oh a candal slice RS oh how they crashed at the side of the road on top of their Rudy helmet TT helmet yeah that has a big dog chain ring as well yeah I think I mean what was that taken on like a Nokia 3310 like

It’s like a what what camera was used to take that picture it looks like a photo of an old photo it does oh anyway we W it looks like a like a World War II photo it doesn’t it does can andow slice rses that in world World War II in color

They didn’t have electronic timing chips in World War II nice yeah Dan Plum with a colago concept gold chain fist bum go on thanks that was a weak fist bum um I like this it’s there’s a lot going on the handlebars with the cables and

The Hedge unit and just looks a bit busy at the front it’s just a shame about that CH that chain set angle yeah you know do you know what I that’s got scope to be really good it is and and I love the cornago concept I it’s a really

Really cool bike um IM imin was nice yanto used to have one didn’t he but I think it got stolen very specific I don’t know that it very nice uh but I think that is that is another bike that could be a super nice but we’re just going very nice

Third category right and on that note that is the end of the bike R for this week’s Tech show um OE it’s been incredible thanks same time next week yeah yeah we’ll we’ll we’ll be here oh we’ll be oh Tech on tour we’re inona next week we are we told every yeah see

You in right see you later cheers bye