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TECH NEWS
Could the UCI scrap the 6.8kg weight limit in 2016?
Since 2000, professional race bikes have not been allowed to weigh less than 6.8kg (15.99lb), a minimum weight rule introduced by the UCI to ensure the safety of cycling equipment, at a time of huge technological change in the sport.
In an interview with Cyclingtips, the UCI’s technical manager Mark Barfield says that the minimum weight rule is currently being analysed with a view to potentially altering it to reflect the current technology in road race bikes.
“It is going to change, it won’t happen overnight and it won’t happen unless we take the industry with us,” says Barfield.
“We know at the UCI that it’s a rule that best represents the past. There’s a desire to change this. Firstly, it’s a relic of the past. Secondly, it doesn’t make any sense and doesn’t do what it was set out to achieve.”
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The UCI introduced the minimum weight limit on safety grounds, to ensure the manufacturers, at a point when carbon fibre was in its infancy, didn’t push the limits of weight to the point that failures might have been a regular occurrence.
A lot has happened in 15 years, however, and today it’s possible to walk into any decent bike shop and buy a top-end race bike is lighter than 6.8kg, and therefore not UCI legal. That means the slightly bizarre situation where cycling fans can ride around on bikes lighter than the one Chris Froome used to win the Tour de France.
Professional racers regularly race bikes lighter than 6.8kg. Mechanics get around this by fitting lead weights or heavier components to bikes just to ensure they hit the minimum weight. So already bikes exist that are lighter than 6.8kg, which makes the ruling look redundant.
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To be fair to the UCI, the weight limit probably served a useful purpose during the early days of carbon fibre manufacturing, but it does appear to be outdated in this modern age of advanced race bikes. Could the UCI be set to lower the weight limit, or might it scrap it completely?
“For some manufacturers it provides some reassurance. They think that they can build aero bikes, that they can add electronic gearing or they can do whatever they like around the bike and it’ll still be 6.8kg. It is going to change, it won’t happen overnight and it won’t happen unless we take the industry with us,” adds Barfield.
“Now, 6.8kg doesn’t make a bike that is safe. 10kg doesn’t mean a bike is safe, nor does 5kg make a bike unsafe. There is a project planned to alter this."
Could the UCI then be set to scrap the 6.8kg ruling completely, or simply relax the rule? Would dropping the weight limit open the floodgates for an arms race as manufacturers compete to produce the lightest possible race bike, so is having a weight limit a good thing for the sport and industry, even if it’s revised to a lower limit?
When this might happen we don’t know, but we’ve contacted the UCI for further clarification.
Do you think the weight limit should be removed, lowered or do you think it's fine as it is?
David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes.
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14 comments
Just FYI, 6.8 kg >< 15.99 lbs.
Although the limit is somewhat out-dated, but on the other hand, it caused some of the real innovation.
Like electronic shifting, aero frame, disc brakes. (maybe not directly though)
Without the weight limit, yes, we may have 3kg bikes nowadays, but that's all.
Will you exchange your current hydralic DI2 disc brake bike or your Di2 aero bike with a super light bike without any other feature?
So I'd like to see the limit kept here for serveral years until bike industry is really out of innovation.
In my opinion even knocking 800g off the weight would be fine. I doubt if the limit was 6kg the pro mechanics would still be gluing weights to the bikes. Only the real weight weenies would complain about a 6kg limit.
We all recognise it is time for a ruling change, and to keep the initial reasoning of the UCI I think that there should be no limit as to how lightweight a bike can be BUT the bikes strength is tested instead merely how much it weighs, so it should be able to survive a certain load/impact, i.e. some form of destructive test.
This will give the opportunity to have more innotive bikes, that are both lighter and at least as strong/safe as the current ones the pros' ride.
You then run into the cost and complexity implications of the UCI performing their own independent tests in destroying a perfectly good bike and that can be dramatically affected by the equipment on it as well - to properly go through things like that you'd have to test every single model that the teams ride throughout the year; aero, TT, climbing, disc braked versions etc. Too complicated and too wasteful.
Also not really very useful since in a crash the bike will collapse anyway; we've all seen pictures of pile ups and broken bikes. Of more relevance is "will it fall apart while descending a hill at 50mph?" not "will it break in a crash?"
That 6.8kg rule was introduced when riders were drilling out their equipment (whcih lead to failures) and when carbon fibre was first coming in and was far less advanced than it is now. Everyone knows the rule is out of date and no longer does what it was intended to do, it's probably best to scrap it altogether and let the manufacturers do their own tests and put their own name behind it as in "we've tested this bike at the equivalent of 1 million pedal revolutions of Peter Sagan in a full on sprint and it's fine" or "this frame has been shaken for the euqivalent of 10,000km of the Arenberg Trench and it's still fine".
I didn't mention crash tests, just the strain (load) that a frame goes through while racing, e.g hitting the cobbles at 35+ mph with a big sprinter onboard. Only the frame would have to be tested.
If the purpose of the racing is to test rider performance against a level playing field then the only answer is to give every rider essentially the same bike. If the purpose of the racing is also to encourage inovation, design and technical development of the bicycle then maybe there should be no rules at all, with the exceptions of NO DRUGS and NO ENGINES.
Personally, I'd like to see more pushing the boundaries of what technology can deliver for the selfish reason that I might actually benefit from some of those developments down the line. I also think that bicycle technology can catch the public imagination, I still recall the excitement and publicity surrounding Chris Boardman's Lotus pursuit bike at the 1992 Olympics.
Though surely it's a little late in the day to rip up the rulebook for 2016 without leaving riders open to the risk of hurried, untested changes that the original rule was there to prevent?
maybe to introduce bike+rider weight limit, like they have in car and motorcycle racing
or just lower the current limit to keep things simple
But won't that just force the fatties to ride lighter noodley bikes?
The "safety" argument is a bit dodgy. Having the same weight limit for Greipel and for Contador? Is that sensible?
However, the alternative to a simplistic weight limit is having expensive testing done - which could be beyond the means of smaller manufacturers. But the current situation is daft - they build the lightest bike and then load it down with Powermeters - and even weights - until it makes the limit.
Seeing as it's the UCI, they could come up with anything though. Possibly that the number of degrees from horizontal of the seatstays divided by the cube of mass mustn't be less than the riders' BMI in troy ounces per furlong squared.
Well this could kill off disc brakes for a lot of races.
depends on a lot of factors
If they remove the limit altogether you could well end up with manufacturers pushing the envelope on bike weight, which was why the limit was brought in originally.
Even then there could be cases were improved stopping could be seen as worth the cost of 200 grams, or maybe not.
I think it is more likely there will be a reduction in the minimum weight though, it really is a farce that you can buy a mass produced bike for a few thoudsand pounds lighter than the bikes the pros use, in which case there could well be disc brake bikes at the new limit.
i think a lower weight limit would reflect modern cycling better than scrapping it all together. At least with a minimum limit the racing would be more equal and be a sum of the parts,reliability and rider performance , rather than he is first cos he has the lightest bike.
At last! no longer weighed down by all those batteries.