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news
Jeremy Powers disc brake Instagram video still.JPGVideo: US cyclo-cross great Jeremy Powers enters disc brake debate - by stopping one with his hand
If you follow cyclo-cross, you'll know that Jeremy Powers is something of a legend in the United States, where he has been national champion on four occasions and has won a host of races over the past decade.
Now, the 33-year-old has entered the disc brake debate, posting a video to Instagram in which he gives a thumbs-up to SRAM's rounded disc rotor edges, his thumb still attached to the rest of his hand after he manually stopped it the rotor from spinning.
We should point out that the Rapha Focus rider is also sponsored by SRAM, so there's perhaps a certain element of MRDA - Mandy Rice-Davies Applies - at work.
But while disc brakes are now common-place in cyclo-cross, their use in road racing, where the UCI reintroduced its trial at the start of this year, remains controversial, with riders calling for guards to be put in place.
Earlier this year, Lotto-Belisol pro Adam Hansen accused Specialized of trying to force the technology on the peloton - but the US firm's founder and CEO, Mike Sinyard, insists disc brakes are safe and that they will be ubiquitous in top-level racing within a couple of years.
> Specialized boss Mike Sinyard says in future, all road bikes will have disc brakes
It's not just in the pro ranks that disc brakes are the subject of concerns over safety, either - last month, we reported how road.cc reader Peter Curtis-Brown blamed one on a friend's bike for causing deep cuts to his leg when it brushed against him during a Sunday morning ride.
> Video: road.cc reader films moment he says his leg was cut by disc brake rotor
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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21 comments
I was riding back from the local mountain biking centre the other day. There is a mighty descent on the way home, and I have to say, the extra confidence I took into the corners on my MTB compared to road bike on the same descent was striking.
So strking that I spent the rest of the ride thinking about why that was. The tyres, whilst bigger, ultimately offer less grip than a road tire... so its not that. I was left with braking performance and manouverability.
The braking from discs gives more confidence, no question. To be able to brake hard without locking out your forearms through force, just opens you up completely.
Its the modulation that is key for me and getting braking force at the wheel without murdering the brake lever.
so for me, any talk about the merits of discs are a mute point. They are better.
However, I'd also say they are ugly, and as demonstrated in the recent video on here, do pose a risk in group crash situations.
How great that risk is in real terms is still very much in debate, but there is no denying that discs add another relatively sharp object into the mix during crashes.
This video is completely irrelevant to the disc debate. Its akin to people thinking if they fall off rollers they are going to fly across the room... not just fall over awkwardly. Inertia is everything in these things.
Do I think discs belong in the peloton? Yeah probably, as I beleive the cutting risk is in real terms a little less than that posed by chainrings
I think it might be fair to state that all users of disc brakes have at some point owned and used in a variety of conditions a bicycle equipped with rim brakes of some kind. Very few of those find disc brakes to be inferior or unsuitable.
The most vocal opponents of disc brakes, certainly on this forum, give no indication that they have ever ridden a disc equipped road bike let alone used one over a period of time in varied conditions. They trot out the same old tired objections and straw man arguments that have been endlessly answered. It borders on pathological conspiracy paranoia.
Having an opinion is fine and dandy. Katie Hopkins for example has made a career out of having an opinion. Having an opinion based on actual first hand experience though does give a certain level of credibility.
If you care about performance, and you have a bike you only take out on dry days, and you can afford 105+, then rim brakes are a good choice. I'd go with alu wheels if you're planning on doing any long descents, though, which might dull the performance edge in all but the hilliest of rides.
If you're often racing in 180 rider pelotons, and your livelihood depends on being able to get to the front of them on command, then YMMV, I'm not getting into that.
If there's something about rim brakes that floats your boat, then fair winds and following seas.
Outside of that, discs are quickly becoming the best option for both performance and safety.
'
hsiaolc wrote:
Get over it please.
Disc are here to stay and soon it will all be discs just like mountain bikes.
Stop this debate already. '
Hmmm. mountain bikes aren't 'all discs': argument void, marketing BS or not.
This is a stupid reply for a number of reasons, including because hsiaolc didn't say that "mountain bikes are all discs" but mostly because mountain bikes that don't have disc brakes are either retro (or retro inspired) or shit and often both. Yes, I can (and occasionally do) turn up to a local XC and have my arse handed to me on a plate by a guy riding a rigid, steel bike with cantis. Doesn't change the fact that 100% (or a number so close to 100% is doesn't make a difference for the point of this discussion) of performance mountain bikes (which is different to performance mountain bikers) are equipped with disc brakes.
One of the guys at my LBS demonstrated the same thing while I was looking at bikes. What a way to make a sale. You can pry my disc brakes from my cold, severed fingers.
I'd like him to do the same test after putting some heat into the rotors.
Plenty of times (mostly wet) I'd have liked to have my MTB stopping power on my road bikes.
Soon disc brakes will be the default option and the old setup will be for BSOs and 'bespoke' bikes bought by the rich who want to be purists or whatever.
I had rim brakes on my old road bike, they were Campy Chorus and they were really really excellent, even in the wet. Ihave discs on my gravel bike and I love them. And they just look cool.
Horses. Courses.
Elite athlete in proving how the vast majority know feck all about cycling and physics video.
Get over it please.
Disc are here to stay and soon it will all be discs just like mountain bikes.
Stop this debate already.
Yes stop the debate, discs are wank and uneccesary for a CX bike and/or a road bike, debate over.
they offer such a limited range of improvement over rim brakes that in competition it will make sod all difference, that people will be thinking they can brake later because of their 'uprated' and more powerful brakes will mean more will be losing grip with the tarmac in those conditions more often.
Wider tyres you say, but but but the pros seemed to manage with 30/32mm tyres by just using a mid depth brake caliper and still manage to get around the very worst a cobbled stage/cobbled classic can throw at them.
The manufacturers have completely redesigned frames for discs (not to mention STIs) to take wider tyres but less changes could have being done to existing frames to take wider tyres and still use a short drop caliper. In the case of CX the u23s are still using cantis ffs, they don't have any more issues braking in the mud than the elites did with discs.
Oh but rim brakes wear out quicker so it'll cost you more, yes it will, but not as much as buying a whole new bike and a whole new set of components and more back up wheels that you already had for the bikes in your posession before you were duped that were perfectly fine.
keep buying into the marketing hype as it's worked perfectly on you but please let's stop the debate right now as it's clear you and many others are patently just dumb suckers.
Why do people spoil a reasonable argument by insulting people who disagree or have a different point of view to them?
Because they lead angry, unfulfilled and grammatically incorrect lives.
I'm struggling to see any insults here.
I'm old enough to remember the same XC MTB debate about this maybe 20 years ago. It's now a non-issue. The pro's ride discs.
Disc brakes are better in the wet than rim brakes.
Disc brakes are better in the mud than rim brakes.
Disc brakes are kind of un-necessary on a road bike in the dry.
These are facts. But who cares? Ride the bike you want to ride. No-one has the right to tell you otherwise. Of course it's down to personal choice and money available what we do. No-one is forcing anyone to buy a new bike.
I have a disc do-everything bike and I love it. I also have a rim-brake race/climbing bike and I love that. Oddly enough I don't wake up in a rage with myself everyday about the choice I'll have to make before I leave the house.
Presumably there were printed pamphlets of manufactured rage against those "dumb suckers" eschewing the penny farthing and believing the "marketing hype" about the safety bicycle. And the derailleur. Etc.
So yeah - stop the debate already.
This is just a nuts post. I have bikes with discs brakes and bikes with rim brakes. Discs are better in all conditions - but in the wet they're much better. I'd go as far to say I feel distinctly unsafe with rim brakes in very wet conditions as they're so inconsistent.
The best thing about disc brakes are their feel and consistency in all conditions. This is simply a physical fact. I've no idea why people get so worked up about them. No one is forcing you to buy a bike with discs.
It's also incredibly annoying being told you're a "sucker" by others for believing the "hype" of discs. How can you have the gall to tell someone their personal experience is wrong?
Only c.2 hours in and I am at risk of breaking (no pun intended) my self imposed silence on merits of disc brakes, although in my defence this reply isn't about merits of use in a road context.
Personal experience - FWIW - in cross is that they make a massive difference (to me,) but maybe this is because I am not very good at setting up cantis. Anyway, have invested in cross frame with discs so not likely to revert to test.
At World Cup/World Champ level a quick scan of some YouTube footage suggests most U23s are on discs (see Bieles, as an example: if you watch the finish, the top 11 (after which they interview Nieuwenhuis, so its hard to tell after that) are all on discs). Based on my limited observations, a significant portion of the juniors are on cantis. I think this may partly be down to sponsorship - U23 in Benelux is essentially pro, so they get same kit as elites. Juniors not so much, they sometimes get hand-me-down frames but in any event have less of team budget.
I also wonder whether discs have already changed cross (at pro level). No scientific evidence in support, but as a keen watcher of cross races, it seemed to me that last year's pro races involved a lot less pitting than in previous years. Maybe this is just a consequence of an unusually clement cross season/not enough mud (and the example of Bieles - where it looked as though you could quite happily pit twice a lap - is the exception that may disprove the rule), but will be interesting to see whether this trend (if that's what it is) continues in future. Seems coincidental that it coincided with widespread adoption (to the point of ubiquity) of discs.
A free spinning 850g wheel does not have the same inertia as one with 90kg of rider and bike on it.
Could the spazzers who make these silly videos please try doing it leaning out of a car window while a bike and rider are actually moving along at say, 70kmh and lets see how that turns out.
Do you think calling people spazzers is appropriate?
Why is he wearing helmet in this video?
*ducks*