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TECH NEWS
6.8kg scales 2 - 1.jpgCould the UCI be set to finally scrap or lower the 6.8kg weight limit? Have your say in our poll
Lowering or scraping the 6.8kg minimum weight limit that all professional race bikes must adhere to is something that has been talked about for many years, but there are fresh rumours doing the rounds that suggest the UCI might be closer to updating the rule book.
The Inner Ring reported some industry gossip by matosvelo.fr (the website is currently down) that the “UCI is certain to lower the 6.8kg minimum weight for bikes, but some brands lobbying for it not to be too low for fear of disc brake models look too heavy in comparison.”
Some bike industry gossip https://t.co/eJ9Cjf2gwG via @matosvelo ...including UCI certain to lower the 6.8kg minimum weight for bikes, but some brands lobbying for it not to be too low for fear their disc-brake models look too heavy in comparison.
— the Inner Ring (@inrng) July 12, 2018
The rumour likely come from a recent meeting of the WFSGI (World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry) at Eurobike. A press release revealed the technical meeting touched on subjects including the bicycle weight limit, as well as rim and tyre interaction, frame and design regulations and e-bike competition. Sadly we don’t know the outcome of any of those discussions.
Discussing the outcome of the meeting, Robbert de Kock, CEO and President WFSGI said: ”These meetings are the cornerstone of our annual structure within our bicycle section. A face to face update meeting provides an invaluable opportunity to share with our members the progress we have made in the time since our last meeting and renew our focus in the areas we have highlighted as priorities in the coming months. We also enjoy the opportunity to listen to our members concerns and form consensus wherever possible on the issues and challenges we face”.
First introduced in 2000, the rule was brought in at a time when bike manufacturers found it quite difficult to get a bike below 6.8kg, and the failure rate of frames and components was much higher than it is now. The UCI’s intention was to ensure rider safety but it’s fair to say the advances of the last decade have seen bikes become much lighter and for the most part incredibly safe and reliable.
- Bauke Mollema’s bike makes mockery of UCI weight limit
For the past few years, it has been possible to build a bike much lighter than 6.8kg and also with dependable durability - we’ve tested many bikes that would be illegal in a UCI race. That has led to team mechanics often having to add ballast to the bike to ensure they comply with the rules. But it means consumers can ride a bike lighter than the pros race.
We've regularly seen sub-5kg production bikes. The Canyon Ultimate CF Evo 10.0 LTD, Trek Emonda SLR 9, Merida Scultura Superlite Ltd and AX Lightness Vial Evo Ultra all make a mockery of the UCI weight limit. They're not cheap bikes mind, while it's easier than ever to go seriously light you need to have deep pockets to afford these bikes.
- 6 of the lightest road bikes — bike makers challenge the scales with exotic materials
Would a lower weight limit spell the end for disc brake bikes in the pro peloton? It’s taken a few years for bike manufacturers to get the weight of disc-equipped bikes down to the UCI weight limit, but they are slowly getting there. The new Trek Emonda SLR Disc is 6.7kg and the Specialized S-Works Tarmac Disc with a power meter is 6.6kg.
A lower, or completely removed weight limit, could mean a U-turn for disc brakes as rim brake bikes are still the lighter choice. Who wants to ride a 6.6kg disc brake bike if you could ride a 4.6kg rim brake bike?
Could the UCI scrap (unlikely) or lower (most likely) the minimum weight limit then? We don’t have an inside line to the UCI so your guess is as good as ours, but we can’t see them removing it completely, lowering it as the most likely outcome would be our prediction.
But by how much? 6.5kg? 6kg? 5kg? Do they pick an arbitrary figure or average out all the lightest bikes by the WorldTour bike sponsors? How light would you set the limit? Could lowering the weight limit have a negative impact as it leads to a new arms race, or would it stimulate healthy development and competition?
Is weight even really that important to the pros though? Weight has always been an easier sell, but recent developments have focused on aerodynamics as at typical race speeds there’s enough evidence that wind resistance is the biggest force a cyclist faces, weight only really comes into it on climbs above about 8%.
What do you think? Have your say in our poll below.
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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28 comments
"Who wants to ride a 6.6kg disc brake bike if you could ride a 4.6kg rim brake bike?"
Why make such crap up? A more accurate statement would be 'Who wants to ride a 6.3kg disc brake bike if you could ride a 6.6kg rim brake bike? Also being able to reduce rotational weight of rim as it no longer has to resist being crushed will blance things out anyway.
A disc brake Venge is lighter/faster than the last rim brake version anyway.
If you compare rim brake clinchers with rim brake tubular rims you will see the tubular versions are significantly lighter. They both have to withstand the force of the caliper on the rim but the tubular version is lighter. The reinforcement is not for the sake of the rim brake it is for the sake of the clincher tyre putting pressure on the rim.
Thanks Dave, to look at them I'd always assumed they were heavier!
The problem for manufacturers is that whilst they would produce extremely light bikes for the racing snakes and indeed would have to do so because suddenly anything weighing more than 5Kg would be considered crap by the keyboard experts, they must also keep an eye on product liability.
Creating a light frame, wheelset and components to get a pro rider through a stage on a race is one thing, letting that same basic setup out in public will most likely result in product failure, lawsuits and reputational damage when real people with real BMIs are riding those bicycles over a number of seasons. The old adage "Strong / Light / Cheap - pick 2" is very apt.
Of course as a private individual you can already go out and spec a bicycle well under the UCI weight limit, but that is not mainstream. At present the weight limit is a level playing field and makes innovations such as power meters, onboard cameras / telemetry, gps, disc brakes, electronic groupsets, aerodynamics (within the rules) feasible even if only as fancy ballast depending on your view of those technologies and how useful they may be as they trickle down to the average bicycle rider. More importantly it also allows building in a significant margin of safety in strength because there is no practical penalty for doing so.
Ultimately would lowering the weight limit make any real difference to the racing?
Strong/light/cheap isn't as apt is it used to be, not comparatively anyway. You can buy a sub 1200g frameset for not a huge amount these days. I had a 62cm Scott CR1 SL (the exact same ones westbrook cycles were well known to be selling off cheap a few years back), it was 920g bare frame, the forks were 328g. That was the biggest size of an endurance frameset. Add in SRAM Red, a pair of 1200g deep rimmed carbon tubs plus some accessible/not expensive carbon bits and you have a sub 6kg bike easily (incl pedals and bottle cages) for less than the cost of a handbuilt frame.
Strong, not expensive and light (well below the current UCI limit) is well within the reach of many, of course shaving down further under 5.5/5.6kg becomes more expensive but I'd still rather be cutting off a kilo off the bike weight if I had a choice and bodyweight couldn't be changed.
I'd say the relative numbers may have changed a little but the same contradictory forces are at work.
I don't think it is. If it was then a lot more of us would be riding around on 5kg bikes instead of 7-8kg ones.
No-one is stopping you buying/building a super-lightweight bike but in the end like so many things it's diminishing returns.
A 1000g frameset still has to have a load of stuff bolted onto it. Make it 500g and it still needs the same stuff bolted onto it.
Look at the difference in weight between the groupsets, it's not huge.
In the end it's all just hype, you still have to pedal your own weight up a hill. Even if you're ~60 kg like me the bike is certainly not the limiting factor.
Ultimately, would the use of disc brake make any real difference to the racing?
Not really in my opinion, so why all the fuss from people who prefer the traditional look of rim brake setups?
“UCI is certain to lower the 6.8kg minimum weight for bikes, but some brands lobbying for it not to be too low for fear of disc brake models look too heavy in comparison.”
There can be no question that disc brakes slow progress.
How much do the rider's power meters weigh? Wonder how important riding to power is and how much of a weight sacrifice it is worth.
most of them don't add much weight. Stages, for example, is less than 20g. chainring-based systems are a bit heavier but still you're only looking at 100g or so
sounds like you are criticising something you have never used and have no idea about.
I find my power meter one of the best purchases ive made for my bike. It's the true indicator of how hard I'm cycling. As speed is completely irrelevant when its effected by a tailwind, downhill gradient, drafting, etc. Just ask the woman who lives near me who keeps on bragging about QOMs she got on Strava, she's oblivious to the fact that they were all on the flat and on a very windy day. A power meter would show its not her that's cycling fast, but it's the tailwind.
I’d love to see it lowered to 4kg. At the moment small riders are forced to ride bikes that weigh the same as larger riders which is unfair, smaller riders should be able to ride lighter bikes to make up for being a little less powerful. Also, it will allow a proper difference between aero and lightweight bikes again which might drive forward innovation.
What about setting weight limits bands based on rider weights? Bike weight has a much larger effect on smaller riders than larger riders due to % body weight.
The reason UCI has a weight rule is to keep the bikes safe, not weight for its own sake.
True. However, ChrisG619 is referring to the fact that a blanket weight limit affects lighter riders more because the bike is a greater proportion of all-up weight. In Moto3 (the MotoGP's tiddler class) the minimum weight is for combined bike + rider. However, doing something like this would add complication and potential for issues on several fronts.
I don't see that lowering the minimum will make any difference to the racing. It will just be a marketing angle (as if there aren't enough of those already).
Also, even the lightest hill climb bikes (single ring, chopped handlebars & saddle etc) are around 5 - 5.5 kg, which indicates that there isn't a great deal of scope anyway.
True, but the issue is the limit was set in 2000. 18 years is a hell of a long time compared to what they were riding then
I don't understand your suggesiton that disc bikes would suddenly be massively heavier than rim.
"Who wants to ride a 6.6kg disc brake bike if you could ride a 4.6kg rim brake bike?"
Currently the weight penalty for discs (on most production race bikes) is apparently somehwere in the region of 300-500g. Surely there's no real reason why this offset would increase by that much. On weight weenie builds most of the weight saving components are not brake type specific, so a hydro disc bike could still have super light rims, bar, saddle, post, cranks, cassette, Ti bolts, etc. etc. and these are mostly parts that are very very expensive and from small volume companies. Not really the sort of components that you're likely to see hanging off a team full of pro bikes supplied by sponsors.
Manufacturers are already at the point where frame weight is limited by materials/production methods/cost, and that applies to disc as much as it does rim.
They don't mind having discs if they have to add ballast anyway but I expect they'll quickly drop them with a lower weight limit.
Have you a source for that or did you simply make it up?
As for the weight differences between decent level disc and rim brakes, Canyon state the disc version weighs 300g more for the Aeroad CF 8.0 disc, Trek 180g for the Madone SLR6.
The £9,250 Specialized S-Works Tarmac disc was measured at 6.69 kg v 6.38 kg for the rim-braked version (source).
Claimed weight for a 56cm Tarmac S-Works frame is 733g so I can't see there being much room for weight loss there.
Don't mind scrapping/lowering it at the top end, for amateur riding it's fine as it is.
However the cost difference between a high end bike weighing 5.5kg and one weighing 6.8kg doesn't have to be a lot of money, you don't have to go into Schmolke/Lightweight money to do so either.
There's a very big smell coming from manufacturers shitting their pants that the pros would want to go back to proper bikes instead of the disc braked nonsense which actually costs them more effort to move the same distance/speed than caliper braked bikes.
Funny how in the peleton those on dics aren't outbraking those on calipers to make up huge chunks of time/places and it certainly isn't going to improve safety nor has it done so at any juncture as claimed by quite a few.
So IF they drop the weight limit to 5kg for example which of the pros are going to think, hang on a minute, my bike is kg or so heavier than my competitors and I've got to yank this boat anchor up the next col and the next and the next. They'll be wanting to go back to rim brakes and that will blow the manufacturers sales tactics right out the water as far as pushing disc braked road race bikes to the max with no deleopment on rim braked bikes anywhere near the same level. For example it shouldn't take much to design a top end frame that can take a 28/30/32mm tyre (the latter two at the rear say)and a racing/top end brake calipers that accepts those wider tyres so that riders are not having to swap out for a lower level brake caliper or 'endurance' frame(for cobbled stages/races). Nope, we'll just develop an inferior and heavier bike but make out it's the emperors new clothes.
Even with a Scott Addict SL frame from a few years back you could easily and not overtly expensively build a 5.5kg bike incl stock pedals.
The flat earthers types are still with us I see.
'Proper bikes'....what ridiculous nonsense. I find it utterly baffling this whole anti-disc brake nonsense. Did your grandfather object to derailers and your dad to clipless pedals too?
Scrap the weight limit, but ensure that the UCI frame integrity tests etc are enforced and applicable.
That'll make hidden motors standout like a sore thumb.
Should make them ride 10kg bikes just make the Joe Public look like real donkeys on ultralights.
The 6.8kg UCI rule is a good rule. It helps keep cycling from becoming a sport you can buy your way into first place with, especially in amateur level competition. There are similar regulations in rowing too, governing things like sliding riggers and other expensive but performance-enhancing features, to keep the best off from trumping the rest of the pack by virtue of their wallet.
I'm afraid, even at an amateur level, money already buys speed.
Aero bike with aero wheels will set you back 4-5k and give you a massive amount of speed - weight isn't going to have anywhere as significant impact.
The price of kit on display in a 4th cat crit is mind-boggling. A safety standard might be better but it's probably a nightmare to set up and enforce. Not that anyone has ever weighed my bike before a race...