The Trouble With Pros

One of the things I’ve long loved about cycling is that we can own and ride the same bikes the pros ride. That’s not true in many sports. You might be able to buy a motorcycle close to what the pros race whether on the track or motocross, but you can’t get the tires the factory racers run. And when it comes to four wheels, try to buy a Formula 1 car. Just no.

In cycling, the rise of carbon fiber as the primary material from which frames and rims are made has eliminated custom frames for pros; custom is strictly the domain of the average Joe. Strange but true.

The upshot is: We can purchase the very same frame running the same components, wheels and even tires that the pros race at the Tour de France. That we can have the same experience on the road as a pro is thrilling.

There is, however, a significant way in which our experience should deviate from that of the pros: our bike fit. Pro bike fit has evolved over the last 50 years, in some ways for the better, and some ways, less so.

Allow me to explain.

Level as a billiard table
If you have watched any pro cycling, or even looked at photos from races held the last few years, one common theme emerges almost instantly: Everyone has a back so flat you could serve dinner on it. If we compare this to the fits we saw in the 1970s and ’80s—the point at which fit began to be codified in a more scientific sense—what we see is that, in general, the handlebar was positioned higher and had more drop.

Skipping the bit where you need to be riding more than 20 hours a week in order to generate power in such a low position, there are several problems with setting up a bike with no stem spacers and a saddle that is 6 in. higher than the bar. I’ll do this in bullet points:

• Once you cut the steerer on a fork, you can never make it longer.
• With no spacers below the stem—or above it, the only way to increase bar height is to flip the stem.
• The number one result from almost any injury to a cyclist is needing to raise the bar to accommodate a reduction in flexibility following time off the bike.
• As we age, we lose flexibility, period.

The look
I won’t deny that Tadej Pogačar’s position on his bike looks impressive; there is an elegance to the way he sits on a bike. He can be held up as exemplifying the position we see most pros riding. Now, I want to contrast his position with that of Eddy Merckx. When Merckx was in his drops, he could achieve a flat back, but his elbows were still bent. By comparison, Pogačar—like most pros today—bends his elbows when he’s on his hoods and not much when he’s in his drops.

Merckx was famous—or infamous, depending on your view—for tinkering with his position, particularly his saddle height, as a result of a back injury on the track early in his career. But there’s a lesson in comparing his position to that of the contemporary pro. What’s germane here is that he was attentive to his fit and saw it as fluid, something that evolved based on his body’s needs.

Merckx rode a bike with a stem that was roughly 2 in. lower than his saddle; in the off season, he raised his bar a bit, something that was easy to do with quill stems. He also rode a deep drop bar, the Cinelli 66. Compare that with a 6-8 in. drop from saddle to bar we commonly see today. Little wonder that most bars sold today feature a shallow drop—something I’ll address in another post.

The takeaway

My takeaway anyway, is that for anyone who wants to invest in an expensive road or gravel bike, in order to future-proof it as much as possible, a rider needs a relatively neutral position; that is, a position that allows them to raise the bar some in the winter or following an injury (or in the event of the inevitable—aging) and to lower it in the height of the season when we are most fit and are at our most flexible. Ultimately, the lesson is this: Fit is dynamic, not static, and the more extreme (distinctive) the bike fit looks, the less adaptable it is.