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TECH NEWS
specialized tarmac disc (2)Disc brakes to appear in pro peloton this year
The UCI, has confirmed that hydrualic disc brakes will make their first appearance in the professional peloton this year under an experimental programme announced today by cycling governing body the UCI and the World Federation of Sporting Goods Industries (WFSGI) ahead of an anticipated full roll-out in 2017.
That schedule tallies with road.cc's exclusive report last month detailing discussions between the UCI and the WFSGI.
"The aim is to eventually introduce disc brakes to all levels of road cycling," the two organisations said in a joint statement
The process will start during August and September of this year when all teams will be able to use bikes with disc brakes during two events.
Testing will continue in 2016 at all events on the UCI professional road calendar and, if the experience is satisfactory, disc brakes will be officially introduced to the UCI WorldTour in 2017.
UCI president Brian Cookson said: “Although disc brakes have been used for around a decade in mountain biking and for the last two years in cyclo-cross, their introduction to road cycling must be carefully studied in collaboration with all those who are directly concerned.
"That includes riders, teams and manufacturers. This step is part of the UCI’s desire to encourage innovation in order to ensure cycling is even more attractive for spectators, riders, bike users and broadcasters.”
WFSGI Secretary General Robbert de Kock said: “The industry is delighted by this news and also thanks the UCI for the very positive collaboration.
"This decision will further develop innovation and create new possibilities for the bicycle industry as well as additional performance for the riders.
"There is still some fine tuning to do on detailed requirements for the procedure, but it is very exciting to finally have reached this decision.
"The remaining open topics such as neutral race support or the UCI and Teams protocol will be tackled soon,”
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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52 comments
Agree, hot rotors sound very Ben-Hur, but doubt the are more risk than other bike parts or the road. I can see a nice aftermarket opportunity though for snazzy vented carbon fibre disc covers to protect riders though... hang on... that an extra 30 grams and will put the purists in a lather.
I'm not certain that hot rotors are more of a danger than, say, chainrings, aero spokes or, ya know, tarmac but they would only be an issue at the bottom of long descents. Serious question: how many pile-ups have occurred at the bottom of long descents? I just don't know the answer to that...
And daily consistency problems from disc brakes? Ones that were maintained by peleton engineers and properly bedded-in? Or ones that numpties had sprayed WD40 into?
Not a fan. Still a long way to go to get consistent results. A bigger concern is a hot blade touching or cutting/burning into someone in a pile up.
Might I ask, consistent results of what ?
Consistent braking results from disc brakes. There are issues with pads and with braking consistency that would need to be worked out. Also not sure how the pads would hold up to the unique braking that occurs during a road race where the brakes are used to modulate speed while still pedaling. Will be interesting to see how they hold up.
Not aware of any consistency issues as such with discs - on or off road - quite the opposite. There has been some understandable concerns about disc temperatures, in particular in situations like long Alpine descents, and pad wear on longer stages - struggling to see how current disc brakes would be less consistent than, e.g. rim brakes on carbon rimmed wheels.
I see some inconsistencies daily in our shop but they are really not the big concern here. What needs to be in the discussion is the hot rotors and what can result in a pile up. Let's have some discussion on that which is a rider safety issue and my reason for why they should not be in a mass start road event.
Are you saying you're seeing inconsistencies daily across comparable setups? Say a well-bled XT disc system with 160mm rotors and sintered pads being even noticeably different from an identical system?
Or do you mean across brands etc, just like calipers or cantis vary widely today?
I've never had a disc brake be inconsistent. They're all consistent (and in the case of most Avid brakes I've tried, consistently crap).
Well bled would indicate that it was done properly. Unfortunately, there will be a lot of Yahoo's who would attempt it themselves and screw it up. Amateur level will see this happen all too often and will lead to issues. Not everyone can or will use a trained mechanic to do their bike maintenance. Which is what I see. In a perfect world we would not see these issues.
So, by your reasoning, not something that's going to happen in the pro-peloton and so no real cause for concern. I highly doubt it'll be an issue at the amateur racing level either but if a race series for part-time commuters ever takes off you may be on to something...
Umm, really? In all my years of using them, I've neither experienced nor heard of (until now) any issues with pads and braking consistency.
There isn't anything particularly special about the way that the pro peleton uses brakes - they use them to slow their bikes down. They've managed to keep riding and braking through years of innovation in pads, rims, calipers.
That's not to say that they *need* disc brakes - I'm sure that they've all got the bike handling skills to ride using 70-year-old U-brakes with leather blocks - nor that they'll necessarily want them - the aero and possible neutral service costs may outweigh the predictability and control gains (certainly, reduced rim wear is hardly an issue for pros).
They aren't, though, an indication of the imminent victory of Beelzebub in the fight against goodness and light. You can relax.
you cAN ONLY sto[p if the tyre contact is ok the lasthing to touchearth so there will be a lot of lock ups if you are thinking that is going to stop you get a good earth contact and no matter if you have disc brakes the ground contact is wot its all about
I still don't see the point. The weak point in your braking system will always be road/tyre interface. If your rim brakes don't give you that already you need to adjust them properly or pull harder.
The mtb examples just don't hold water. The drive there was partly because it is easy to dent and buckle a mtb wheel on any weekend warrior route so rim brakes were always a problem. This simply isn't true on road bikes.
So why carry the weight, the aero loss, the wider frame and the difficult wheel changes?
It's not about the absolute power, or the break-away point of the tyre - if you've not experienced some of the reasons why a lot of people like them on the road, then you only have to look at some of the reviews of them in the bike press or the comments following them. They're not the saviour of road cycling nor the work of the devil, they're just consistently good at doing something rather well (at least half-decent dual piston jobs). There are shit disc brakes and great ones, same as rim caliper, cantis or V-brakes.. ok, not that last one.
The weight gain is generally pretty small and getting smaller, the aero loss trivial (ask the guys that have done the wind tunnel testing), the wider frame irrelevant and the wheel changes not difficult. I agree you don't see the point - but you also need to get a grip on the real relative merits and trade-offs.
There's good research that suggests mixing disc and rim brakes in the pro peloton could create a tear in the space-time continuum, and the laws of physics as we currently know them would be turned on their head. Either that or nothing much at all will happen.
That's why all race teams will start to employ quantum mechanics from 2016...
There's a lot of people wondering why this is such a big issue. For me, it's not just another tech feature to take or leave, that might catch on or fail (like 3D TV, for example). By intrinsically changing the braking mechanics of a road bike and adding the context of road racing, mixed rim/discs pelotons and contentious issue of brakes outperforming the tyre's contact patch it's a very debatable issue.
The way I see it is:
- Mixed rim/disc race pelotons will sort themselves out. The rain may cause a few crashes, but, within a year teams will likely use either discs or rims and neutralise the field
- Non race situations will create club ride problems for longer as discs will be slower to catch on and people will over-brake in dodgy situations (rain, gravel etc) and falling off on their own or collecting less retarded folk from behind them who are on rims. We need to remember that compared to road bikes, MTBs were a no-brainer for discs as they don't ride in such close formation and they have a comparatively huge contact area to brake with
Either way, it seems like discs will become defacto, apart from the purists and those that have top spec rim brakes or who have shelled out on carbon rims which they must get their use from!
The only problem is given what happened in MTB my bike and nice wheels will be obsolete in a few years. Which is frustrating as a made a big investment in my current wheels a year ago. I was thinking of buying a new frame or maybe bike this year but I will definitely be waiting another year or so to see how the disc debate turns out as I'm not going toa waste my money on rim equipt if it's goning to be out of date. I know disc bikes are out there but I imagine the range of choice will expand a great deal soon and hopefully the price of discs will come down.
I wonder if others will do the same and wait a while before further purchases, will this reduced bike sales for a year or two?
Sorry but I don't really recall the road world stabilising in terms of standards. Yes OK things tend to take longer to change compared to the MTB world, which can often appear to make great leaps (like wheel size), and things like road wheels have been quick release for ages, but
- brake styles have changed with lever compatibility therefore sometimes presenting issues (not to mention differences in lever pull between campag and shimano/sram).
- fork steerer diameters (to taper, or not to taper, and all the size combinations that are out there if you do taper)
- seatpost size,
- tyre size,
- cassette/wheel compatibility
- all the different gearing options (number of gears, range of gears and associated mech compatibility,
- cross compatibility between brands - or lack of!
- handlebar/stem clamp diameter (was 1", then 1 1/8", and now 1.5")
- and then you have factory wheels which you pay a shed load for thinking you'll have for ages only to find that four years down the line the manufacturer has stopped making spares!
Yes 'standards' change in road or MTB, but if you are sensible in your purchase you generally find that whatever 'standards' are on your bike spares will be around long enough for you to have decent use out of it.
If you wait around for standards to become standard, you'll never buy another bike.
Nothing like the white heat of competition to show the worth of a new technology. I'm pretty sure that teams will use disc brakes where they see that they will give an advantage in exactly the same way as they use time trial specific rigs and fancy helmets and all the other allowed permutations of frame and wheel types for specific events. Best of all, the benefits of technical advances made in support of competition filter down to us low lives eventually so regardless of any current prejudices it's all good in the long run.
Might help them to stop at railway crossings!
On another note I will not be going back to rim brakes, I have discs (although they are cable ones currently) on my London Road and they are great.
No more inconsistent braking, wondering if I will/won't stop on wet rides no different braking characteristics between carbon and alloy rims. Plus as hampstead bandit states axle standardisation will be a good thing etc etc...
yay!
I am loving the hydraulic disc brakes on my road bike, but I come from 25+ years of mountain biking where I appreciated the introduction of disc brakes which meant I could stop in all weathers with confidence. Same experience with my disc brake road bike.
I don't race, but cannot see the widespread introduction of disc brakes across road bikes to be a bad thing, only a good thing, as it will mean standardization of wheels/axles which can only benefit customers, rather than the free-for-all that seems to be occuring at the moment.
Whether or not this makes sense in road racing, most big teams are sponsored by Shimano, thus don't choose their groupset, they fit what they are told to, and with the current weight limit of (6.8kg?) makes it no penalty to add discs.
If that drops to 5 kg.....expect a little bit of fight back!
Personally I find it a bit daft, F1 doesn't have traction control or ABS, and I don't think closed road cycling needs more stopping power at the wheel either. I don't lose any sleep over it though!
"their introduction to road cycling must be carefully studied in collaboration with all those who are directly concerned."
Translation: Much to the Luddites chagrin,
we have to hold their fairy hands...and keep the night light on until mommy say's it's okay little boys, it's okay. 
Doesn't this rather relegate all new rim braked roadbikes sitting in showrooms to the dustbin of racing history? A brand new Dura Ace braked bike will have a significantly lower perceived value. Surely the suppliers be practically giving them away? Ditto wheels, frames etc. If you like/want to stick with rim brakes, you'll be spoilt for choices and bargains in the short term at least.
Not a bad thing IMHO.
Zipp 404's, swisstop blocks... Stop on a six pence! Discs will be a team mechanics nightmare when changing wheels. I'm not against discs for everyday use, commute, but do the pro's really need them?
I have no idea how effective my competitors brakes are in comparison to mine. We're all on rim brakes but there is a BIG difference in stopping power between something like industry benchmark Ultegra and some brands of superlight forged calipers. Add in some carbon rims vs alu rims and some rain.....
I just trust that I can stop without going into the back of someone and I trust that they can stop without going into the back of me. We ride accordingly.
Good calipers can make tyres break traction from the road surface. Discs can do the same.
There will be no issue with peletons of mixed brake systems.
That happens now anyway, there is a big difference in the performance of rim brakes depending on servicing, setup, carbon rims, etc.
From my experience riding with disc and caliper brakes on road bikes there is no real difference, I can modulate the braking equally well with either. Discs are just more predicatable in the wet.
Surely bikes that can slow down quickly and bikes that can slow down slowly in the same race would be a bit of an accident waiting to happen?
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