The biggest story in cycling over the past week has, of course, been the foray around Lorena Wiebes’ disqualification from the Giro d’Italia Women, after commiseurs found her bike to be 20g below the 6.8g lower limit.
I think it’s been interesting that every media outlet has followed a similar narrative: the bike’s weight had no impact on her sprint win, and therefore, she should not have been disqualified.
Undercover Mechanic
Cycling Weekly’s Undercover Mechanic publishes his thoughts on the state of the industry once a month. He’s been working with bikes for over two decades, offering servicing on models from some of cycling’s best (and worst) marques. You’ll find him at all major trade shows and events, just don’t expect him to make himself known.
As usual, the UCI have taken on the role of the Death Star: the big evil empire that sits above cycling and rubs its hands together while the little people try to bullseye womp rats. That might be too many Star Wars references for the younger amongst our readers, but I think most of you will understand the analogy.
This narrative avoids one simple truth: rules are rules. And, these rules are enforced by local volunteers. Because really, that’s what commisaires are. UCI commissaires are paid a small token amount, plus expenses.
The commissaires are not the people who deliberate, debate, and ultimately create the rules – but they are asked to enforce them. Do we want a situation where these individuals are making judgement calls over where the grey area around a rule starts and finishes?
Of course, the disqualification seems unfair. The 6.8kg rule has been in force since 2000. The UCI’s rule is outdated and harks back to a time when pros were riding steel and aluminum bikes. As far back as 2015, it was described as a “relic of the past” by UCI technical manager Mark Barfield.
Besides the antiquated nature of the rule, it’s also quite primitive when you compare it to the wide range of people riding within that; 6.8kg as a proportion of body weight is going to be hugely different depending on your body composition. Last year, writing for BikeRadar, pro rider Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio said the rule “disproportionately affects smaller riders, particularly women.”
In a perfect world, there’d be some testing done to decide what is the lowest possible safe weight for a bicycle for any given body weight, resulting in different legal weight limits dependent upon your body weight, in order to create proportional rules.
But how would that work in the real world, in a situation where a local volunteer is assessing a bike with limited equipment and limited knowledge? This isn’t to say that commisaires are not intelligent, but consider the stress of that weekend job, for just a second.
I think the ultimate solution here is some sort of sliding scale, that could be applied to these rules so that the result of their being enforced isn’t quite so Go-Kill. Maybe a time penalty per gram the bike is underweight would be a little more reasonable.
In all of this, the biggest takeaway for me is that a rider has been denied a stage victory she would have gained, with or without an extra 20g of tyre sealant, having trusted her team that the bike she picked up before the race was within the limits set by cycling’s governing body.
The team – and the bike manufacturing industry – has edged that machine as close as it possibly can to the boundary of the rule, and is now very upset that it’s been caught drifting slightly over the barrier.
Now everyone knows that these bikes are very light. It’s a shame the athlete had to pay so harshly for that.
