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Road discs: what will they cut?

From soft vegetables to meat products and footwear, we spin up the blades of doom

So, disc brakes are big in the news again, with Owain Doull claiming that one nearly took his foot off (sort of) in Abu Dhabi. Anyway, we've been here before, and there's plenty of people claiming that the blades of doom will be amputating limbs at will, with others offering the counter view that you couldn't cut yourself out of a wet paper bag with one.

Disc brake testing: the subjects

Anyway, there's nothing like a couple of beers of a Friday to make us amenable to a bit of unrigorous scientific testing. And so earlier we were on facebook live offering up various meat and vegetable products to the Ice-Tec rotor of Tony's rear wheel, ably powered by Liam the intern. Cucumbers, carrots, bananas and chorizo were sacrificed to the rotor, plus a bit of pork belly so we didn't have to use our own flesh. It's quite a middle class selection. But the office is next door to Sainsbury's. At the end we also gave it a shoe to eat, to see if we could replicate Doull's predicament. Now we've stuck the vid up on Youtube too, so here it is in all its unrehearsed glory. Enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: if you're looking for peer-reviewed science or Pulitzer-winning investigative journalism, you've come to the wrong story.

Dave is a founding father of road.cc, having previously worked on Cycling Plus and What Mountain Bike magazines back in the day. He also writes about e-bikes for our sister publication ebiketips. He's won three mountain bike bog snorkelling World Championships, and races at the back of the third cats.

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