Requiem for the Deep-Drop Handlebar

When I was a relatively new roadie, and one who thought he knew more than he did, I fetishized the Cinelli 66 handlebar. The Cinelli 66 Campione del Mondo was often referred to the Merckx bar, one of three bars from the fabled Italian manufacturer you could find in most good bike shops.

The Campione del Mondo bar differed from the Giro d’Italia 64, and 65, in that it featured a noticeably deeper drop from the bar top to the bottom of the hook. My friends and I would fantasize about being the sort of rider who could fold themselves in half and take off across France pedaling for hours into the wind, alone, as no one could ever do in quite the fashion that Eddy Merckx did.

What didn’t occur to me until I began to study fit (and earn my first certification as a fitter for the Fit Kit from New England Cycling Academy), was that the genius, the advantage, of the Cinelli 66 wasn’t that it forced you to flatten your back when your stem was as low as possible. To be clear, the riders I knew who purchased the 66 all set it up in the same way: After working the stem around the bar’s bends, clamping the brake levers in place and spiraling cello tape bottom to top, riders would inevitably sink the quill of the stem as deep in the steerer tube as possible.

More comfort, not less
Compared the 64, the 66 offered an additional 2cm of drop; the 64 was designed with 138mm of drop, while the 66 included 158mm. It also included an additional 5mm of reach.

For reasons that probably owe largely to our limbic system and that cash-grab of a hormone, testosterone, everyone I knew who purchased the 66 did so to make their fit more extreme, which makes as much sense as buying shoes three sizes too small to avoid toe overlap.

It wasn’t until I began fitting people that I realized the genius of the bar. A friend made an appointment for a fit and brought over the Merckx bar for installation on his bike. We took some time with him pedaling on my noisy wind trainer to find a bar height that allowed him to pedal with his hands in the drops—a position that, today, we only see riders use on descents. When I measured his reach to the bar top and the hoods, I realized that his hoods sat a bit higher, but the slight increase in reach kept the hood position comfortable, while the bar top sat 2cm higher than with his previous bar.

And then it hit me. He would be able to sit up more on climbs, which would allow him to breathe more fully, relieving his back and giving his hands a break. Every time he changed his hand position, his entire torso moved. Given how static road riding can be, position-wise, the idea that every hand position included a fresh upper body position sent a tiny shockwave through me. That movement would translate to greater comfort over the course of a long day.

Elbows
When you see a photograph of Eddy Merckx astride a Molteni or Merckx, a couple of details are apparent, if you know what to look for. The first is that his bar isn’t much lower than his saddle, unlike the bikes of today where pros often ride a size smaller than is ideal, in order to run a longer stem and lower bar. Also, Merckx’s elbows are always bent.

Yes, his elbows are always bent. You may be wondering, What’s the large, plump, hirsute deal? Get ready.

A couple of weeks ago I went through a lengthy course to become certified as an AiRO fitter. Since learning the basics of the system, I’ve taken photos of several riders I know and fed them into the system to see how aerodynamic their positions are. Simply learning how to use this software has a surprisingly steep learning curve. It’s little wonder that AiRO won’t allow individuals to try to fit themselves; the difference between getting an answer and getting a good answer owes to really understanding bike fit.

What I’ve noticed as I’ve played with people’s positions in the software is that in many instances, I can raise a rider’s bar so that they must bend their elbows to assume their most aero position. Picture this with me: Rider in profile. Hands on the hoods, arms straight, back not quite flat, but low. Now, imagine we raise the bar 3cm and lengthen the stem by 1cm. This will keep the reach consistent. However, now when the rider bends over, to get their traditional position, they must bend their elbows. To the wind, the rider has just eliminated surface area. Their drag coefficient drops. Provided the rider is willing to bend their elbows and engage their core to support their upper body, they have a position that is faster on the flat and allows the rider to sit up more when climbing, which gives them a chance to stretch their back a bit and breathe more fully.

The problem with compact bars—short reach, shallow drop—is that the rider is afforded three hand positions with little change in torso angle. Think about how often any of us see a rider on the flat, hands in the hooks. And generally, our bars are positioned so low that the only way to reach the drop is with a straight arm. And that matters in multiple ways.

Based on everything I’m seeing from AiRO, a rider is better off sitting up a bit more and riding with bent elbows than riding with a flat back and straight arms locked at the elbows. And, hey, if someone gets tired of riding with their elbows bent, they still have room to sit up more.

It’s possible that those champions of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s figured out something about aerodynamics that they couldn’t quantify. In running CFD simulations with AiRO, what I’m seeing is that to achieve greater aerodynamics, I’m going to be raising the bar more often than lowering it. Go figure.