>Here we go again...
>
>It _all_ makes a difference Jan. Would a racer at the top level give
>away any advantage?
>
>Chuck Schmidt
>South Pasadena, Southern California
>
>.
I can think of many reasons why a top racer might _not_ use a product that provides a slight advantage. Money is one (top level racers get paid to ride certain equipment). Reliability is another. Ignorance (if a widget was invented in the U.S. in the 1940s, Italians might never have found out) could be one.
Based on your line of reasoning, racers must have adopted aluminum cranks soon after they appeared in 1932. And in the 1950s, they certainly ditched their 25 lb. racing bikes in favor of 18 lb. randonneur bikes with fenders, racks and lights removed. And of course, they never bothered with Campagnolo Cambio Corsa gears, and used Cyclo or Nivex derailleurs instead, whicht not only allowed shifting while pedaling forward (certainly advantageous, one would think), but also a wider range of gears. Or maybe they didn't?
This is not to say that racers are or were stupid... Their choices often made sense at the time. Each product and way of doing things has advantages and disadvantages, some real, some perceived. And the priorities shift from time to time. Today, racers are obsessed with light weight. That was not necessarily the case at all times. According to Daniel Rebour, racers did not like aluminum cranks because the Q factor was wider than that of steel cranks (even though it was very narrow by today's standards). Apparently, that was considered more important than half a pound in weight.
Somehow, racers were persuaded by Campagnolo to try aluminum cranks, especially after the arms were redesigned to make the Q factor narrower (albeit no narrower than the French cranks.) Clearly, money must have been an object - Campy went from sponsoring a few also-rans (best foreign rider, best regional, etc.) in the 1962 Tour to sponsoring 110 out of 130 starters in 1963 (as documented in the latest issue of VBQ). With that depth of sponsored riders, it is no wonder that all three jersey winners rode full Campy-equipped bikes. That certainly must have helped the acceptance of their aluminum cranks!
The Q factor was the reason for the cottered TA cranks that appeared in 1960. TA thought that they had it nailed, combining the advantages of both aluminum and steel cranks. But they were too late (Q factor no longer was the overriding concern?), or didn't pay enough for pro racers to use them, and by 1962, they redesigned their cranks for square taper BBs. Few racers used them, but they found great success among cyclotourists.
Durability may have been a concern, or simple availability. For example, a Cyclo or a Nivex derailleur makes wheel removal very difficult, unless you have a brazed-on chainrest, which means you need a special frame, etc. I am told that some team in the 1940s, managed by one of the Pellissier brothers (was it La Perle?) actually went that route, using Nivex derailleurs and Maxi-Car hubs on their pro bikes. Can anybody confirm that rumor?
Back to the bottle cages: I suspect there was some shift in priorities that made handlebar-mounted bottle cages' advantages seem no longer worth the disadvantages. That is why I looked at riding style changes that may have made the center-of-gravity issue more of a concern than it had been before.
People have clamped things to their downtubes for ages, so I find it
hard to believe that it took a stroke of genius to come up with the
idea to mount a bottle cage there. More likely, they didn't think it
was a good idea until priorities changed.
--
Jan Heine, Seattle
Editor/Publisher
Vintage Bicycle Quarterly
http://www.mindspring.com/