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Merida Scultura Disc launch 2016 - 11.jpgSpain joins France in banning disc brakes from road events including sportives
Spain has reportedly joined France in banning bikes with disc brakes from road bikes in all road cycling events, including sportives.
El Periodico reports that sources within the national cycling federation, the RFEC, have confirmed that they are “absolutely prohibited” both in competition and in “marche ciclotiurista” – sportive rides.
Officials accompanying such events, whether of a competitive nature or not, will be able to expel any participant who turns up with a bike equipped with disc brakes.
Rafael Coca, president of the RFEC’s technical commission, told the newspaper: “Even if it is discovered once the event has begun [the rider] will be asked to leave for safety reasons, just the same as if they had started without a helmet.”
The move comes less than a fortnight after the UCI decided to halt the trial of disc brakes within the professional peloton after Movistar rider Fran Ventoso claimed to have been badly cut by one in a crash at Paris-Roubaix.
> Fran Ventoso: Disc brakes should never have been allowed in peloton
The following week the French cycling federation, the FFC, said that it would ban them from all events falling under its jurisdiction, which includes mass participation rides such as L’Etape du Tour, with El Periodico reporting that the action was taken in response to a request from the insurance industry.
> Disc brakes banned from French sportives including L'Etape du Tour
Coca told El Periodico that the regulations were “clear, precise and forceful,” and added that the RFEC would seek to send up to six officials to events to ensure that they were complied with.
“The official checks that everything is in order, that a doctor and ambulance are present if an accident happens, that participants who do not belong to the federation have a licence and provisional insurance for the day of the event, that all riders wear a helmet and, from now on, they will be rigorous about equipment and in particular disc brakes.”
While the RFEC’s rules relate only to organised events, the suggestion that insurance companies are behind moves to exclude disc brakes from them does raise a point that could be of relevance to many British riders who head to places such as Mallorca for training camps.
That is, will there come a point when the hotel operators and others hosting or leading such camps are required by their insurers not to let people participate in them on bikes with disc brakes?
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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56 comments
The only plausible argument I can see here is that disc brakes are 'better' (i.e. more modulation) - thus mixed groups might be seen as a hazard. I can just about remember when some vehicles had a rear sticker 'disc brakes fitted'.
To be honest I regard all group riding as a bit hazardous, so I generally avoid it and thus aren't best placed to judge. But as UK events are almost all on open roads I don't suppose there's much organisers could do about 'disc rebels'.
The Cycling Federation of Catalunya has decided that discs are OK to use. If this changes for the 2017 season they will give advanced notice.
La Mussara Gran Fondo also stated on their facebook page that they are not restricting the use of disc brakes.
So, all fine for me. But I still won't register to any new sportives.
Merely a question. In the advent of adoption of disc brakes by the pros, would they be the brakes of choice for time trials and hilltop finishes?
This is the cycling equivalent of "Reefer Madness".
They should ban chain rings and cassettes too, those pesky things are really sharp.....likely to do all sorts of damage to a leg or two. Stupido....
If this were April 1st I would think this is a prank. Come on ride organizers, stop the madness!
This is awesome! It's great, because it stops idiots like me deciding we need something that we really don't.
All positive. If discs really are the future then the industry are going to have to rethink them (guards can't be hard to create, can they?) and while they're working it out maybe standardisation will come in.
For the non-racing user of disc brakes there are absolutely no issues to taking them now.
Standardisation - On your Sunday coffee-and-cake ride, do you have neutral service following you requiring all the riders to have the same wheels? No. You ruin a wheel, your ride is over unless you are near a shop
Guards - As mentioned before, in the world of nasty shit to hit when you crash a bike, covering a small part won't have much effect.
I've ridden and crashed MTBs and road bikes for years, even to the extent of ending up in multiple bike pileups but have NEVER seen a disc brake injury. Broken bones, yes. Concussions, yes. Brake lever punctures, surprisingly frequently. Cuts requiring hospital attention from trees, roots, fences, etc yes. Grazes from gravel or road, of course.
I have a scar on my shin from a pedal strike, numerous puncture marks on my legs from flat pedal pins and a scar down the inside of one leg from a cable stop and the other knee from a stem bolt. And I have yet more scars from hitting the road surface.
Yet no maiming or murdering discs fulfilled their destinies and sliced off a limb. The only disc brake injuries I've seen have been idiot friends putting their fingers into a rotor when fettling on a workstand and they'd have had the same from the spokes I suspect.
Put more concisely, the whole disc brake sportive ban is bullshit and has ensured that whilst I may ride the route of several sportives in France this summer, I'll do it outside the event so I can ride discs if I want to.
Demand for discs is being led by marketeers. Not consumers.
Look at pro cross riders. 50% of them don't even ride discs.
That conflates a few issues mind. One is that CX and road everyday use may not necessarily compare. The other is that it compares amateur and professional "need," which is kind of why we got here in the first place.
Sorry, but that is almost completely the opposite of reality. Disc brakes are quite unlike most cycle technology, in that demand for them is being driven very specifically by consumers, rather than trickled down from the pro-peleton. Bike manufacturers want them adopted by the UCI because they're already satisfying that demand for the consumers.
That said, there are far fewer good reasons for the pro-peleton to adopt them, in comparison to the wider public. Aerodynamics and wheel-change times are far more critical to them than to the rest of us; rim longevity is not an issue at all (whereas it's moderately important for the rest of us); very few races are won on the basis of descending ability, so the improved control that disc brakes bring doesn't rate very highly.
Finally, it is clear that cycling has a wide luddite streak that is prepared to make stuff up to support unsupportable arguments - and that tendency seems to be over-represented among the pros. With specific regard to disc brakes, I suspect this is partly because it is a technology that was not specifically developed for the purpose of making them faster.
Pro cross riders are even less relevant to me than pro road racers.
My demand for discs is led by having ridden bikes with discs. There's no going back.
Me too. I bought my first proper road bike 2 years ago after years on a disc MTB. First time on the road bike I was shocked by how poor the rim brakes are. 2 years and several thousand miles later I still don't have a great deal of confidence in my road bike brakes. I just cannot understand why anybody would object to such a leap in brake performance. Until last week I was planning to upgrade my road bike, largely driven by discs. Now I am not sure which way to go. Are discs going to become obsolete before they are even established, or will common sense prevail?
Bollocks! Disc brake on road bikes have come about because of the way we consumers lapped up disc equipped cyclocross bikes for use on the road. It's because of this demand that disc equipped endurance style bikes capable of taking mudguards started appearing, and then calls for more race orientated bikes to get discs started and thus from there the desire by manufacturers to get discs into the pro scene developed.
Absolutely no doubt that getting discs into the pro-scene is for a large part about marketing and overcoming the stigma that a significant section of the road scene has against discs, but it is also about R&D, as the pro-scene is a great place to test stuff.
I may be in danger of oversimplifying matters, but the biggest dangers are the motorcyles and cars accompanying the races, not disc brakes. Deal with the motorised hazards first.
The first disc manufacturer to bevel the edge of their discs wins.
A proper analysis should have been done on this bike and the wound in question. And even then, it is probably difficult to say the disc was the guilty party. Furthermore, the wound in question looked more like a laceration or jagged cut or gouge ie from a irregular shaped object like a cobble stone and not like a perfect slice that would be caused by a disc brake. Having been a paramedic for a number of years and having seen what happens when someone is toss through a car window into a field and the jagged edged wounds that are created, this leg wound looked very similar.
The Europeans love speculation.
So what is British Cycling's stance on this? Is the UK going to follow suit? Has Road.cc asked for a statement?
Having just bought a steel frame with disc brakes this is not a story I'm comfortable reading.
If this decision had been made 6 months ago, would it have effected my choice between disc and calliper? Yes.
If BC were to ban disc brakes, there will be a lot of upset cyclists, event organisers and suppliers... Imagine if this is applied to the Prudential London 100!
Can we trust BC not to be swayed by industry? We have to consider the decision is made for reasons of safety and not to keep manufacturers happy after all, if this braking system were to be declared not fit for purpose, could this cause a legal precedent? Would there then be a recall/exchange program? The cost to the industry (or more likely the consumer) would be massive.
This whole argument is early days and full of knee jerk reactions (such as this comment lol)
What's needed is some clarity please.
No banning of rim brakes after the fabio feline Incident? On the theme of worse brakes being safer they could all just wear shoes with a high friction surface and slow Dow gradually.
I'm riding the Morzine Grand Trophee sportive in June, I have disc brakes and contacted the organisers to see if I could still ride it. They said that discs were only banned from pro races and not mass participation sportives. This is an FCC sanctiones race.
Isn't there a simple answer to this?
Surely it's not beyond the wit of the disc manufacturers to put a rounded edge on the rotor, thereby reducing the risk of cuts??
Undecided. Two said they'd look at it, the other thought it might be more dangerous. We are talking about a thin edge here, rounded or square should make little difference.
Or even a soft plastic coating on the extreme edge of the rotter (sorry, rotor).
My first double post. I always wondered how that happened.
I mean, sure, whatever floats your boat. But a bike is a 7kg object carved out of pencil thin sheets of alloy or carbon fiber riddled with steel bolts, wires and teeth. If you miss it you'll come a-cropper against solid asphalt, jutting barriers or the flesh covered bones of other human beings. Perhaps covering up 16cm2 out of the universe of sharp and rough edges you can hit if you lose control may be somewhat less important than even marginally improving the odds of not losing control in the first place.
My irony was obvs not sufficiently apparent. The decision and suggestion that discs are are a danger are both obvs insane.
The Spanish authorities have had a few days to carefully consider their position and have had time to look at evidence and to consult expert opinion. I'm really looking forward to them publishing this as an explanation to an otherwise obtuse decision.
Boy am I going to have 'doh' moment when I find out that the brakes I thought were safer because they stopped me a little bit sooner with a little more control and a little less effort are actually psychopathic killers waiting to savage any cyclist they can reach.
This is a daft knee jerk reaction with no evidence to back it up. Amateur riders will be safer with brakes in which they have confidence. There doesn't tend to be a much in the way of large groups riding very close to make this kind of incident (Ventoso's) very likely.
I saw a lot of crashes on decents at last year's Etape Du Tour. Head injuries and collarbones, lots of skin lost. Some of them (either from talking to people or direct eyeball witness) was from tyre blowouts which are usually caused by dragging brakes and overheating rims: not a problem with discs. People should have choice.
We need more information on who in the insurance industry is forcing this madness on cycling on a nation by nation basis.
Hahahahahahahahaha! What?
Meanwhile in 2010: http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uci-allows-disc-brakes-for-cyclo-cross/
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