Outside the box
The bicycle is a vehicle with two wheels of equal diameter. The front is steerable, the rear is driven through a system comprising pedals and a chain. So sayeth Article 1, Sub-section 3.007 of the Union Cycliste Internationale’s technical regulations. At this point, most of us are on the same page. It’s the other 55 pages of its bicycle design bible that sometimes cause disagreement.
The problems started towards the end of the last millennium. Until then bikes had been built from metal and there wasn’t much bike builders could do to create radical new designs. But in the 1990s, advances in composite materials and aerodynamics led to a golden age of weird and wonderful bicycles that handed their riders a winning advantage – remember that Pinarello Espada bike ridden to time-trial glory by Miguel Indurain, or that Lotus bike propelling Chris Boardman to Olympic gold?
‘Many early races were put on to promote bike makers. But as bikes ceased to evolve, the makers ceased to be the main sponsors’
In 2000 the UCI stamped down on this flowering by decreeing that henceforth a bike should look like a bike – that its frame should be ‘of a traditional pattern’. Its
