It wasn't my idea and I hate the things, but my '67 Holdsworth Super Mistral has to have bar-end shifters due to braze ons. Looking at pix of the era, the racing custom seemed to have been to carry the cabling up the bars to the end of the bar tape rather than just up to the brake levers which seems to be the prevailing practice.
Several postings in the archives suggested that the "racing" arrangement is not as satisfactory given the extra friction caused by the extra cable length, bends etc. Have any of you out there recently used this arrangement with better results? I ride "on the drops" all the time and this routing seems preferable as it gets the cabling out of the way.
Peter Kohler
Washington DC USA