dwnhil4thewin
Likes Dirt
I reckon its great that top riders now have such a large range of gear to choose from for races. Makes it interesting to see who will win and on what wheel size.
Its pretty clear that we all want to see rough, hectic tracks being raced in the world cup and so long as we (mountain bikers) still want to see this, we (mountain bikers) are the ones who build the DH tracks anyway and so will continue to build these types of tracks. If some of the riders want to race bigger (or smaller for that matter) wheels on the track because they think it will give them an edge then they should be welcome to do so, so long as the tracks aren't changed just to accommodate this change in wheels. If bigger wheels start to consistently win races then I'm sure more people will start running them or at least trying them, if not then the smaller wheels will probably stick around, but there is always a choice to run what you want. Bigger wheels may or may not actually give an edge but its pretty cool to have that choice.
As for proving which is better? If the top ten riders all decided to run big wheels at the world champs, one of them would still be quite likely to win. It doesn't prove the big wheels are better, it merely suggests that it is likely that they are. They may have made the choice to run bigger wheels because they believed they would have an edge or it may simply be because their sponsor pushed them to run the big wheels to boost sales. Maybe they found no difference in times between tests on both bikes but just picked the bigger wheels for the day? Perhaps the top 10 riders all have a crash somewhere on track and lose 5 seconds and a rider from lower down the ladder wins on their 26" wheels? It doesn't prove anything across one race and trends will only change if it is done repeatedly, as occurred with the change in trend for XC racers towards 29" wheels over a number of years.
I think what DK was getting at was that the only way to even attempt to definitively prove that one wheelsize is better than the other is to run repeat trials across multiple participants for each wheel size on a variety of tracks. The problem with this is that even under such conditions, the shear amount of time it would take to complete all these trials (each wheel size on each track would have to be completed on a separate day with several days rest in between each due to fatigue, DOMS etc affecting the participants) means that the participants' fitness would change across the whole study, meaning that the results lose validity and wheelsize can't be said to account for the difference in speed. Therefore the best way is more likely to be observing trends across multiple WC races as frenchman says, HOWEVER, if all the top riders mistakenly decided to run bigger wheels for the world champs (or were pushed to run them by sponsors), they would all still be on the podium and then the whole industry would probably start pushing these big wheels based on invalid "data".
Anyway, be happy to be even more spoilt for choice than ever before and use whatever you feel makes you quicker. More importantly though, continue building rough tracks to ride and these types of tracks won't go anywhere, regardless of the wheel debate.
Its pretty clear that we all want to see rough, hectic tracks being raced in the world cup and so long as we (mountain bikers) still want to see this, we (mountain bikers) are the ones who build the DH tracks anyway and so will continue to build these types of tracks. If some of the riders want to race bigger (or smaller for that matter) wheels on the track because they think it will give them an edge then they should be welcome to do so, so long as the tracks aren't changed just to accommodate this change in wheels. If bigger wheels start to consistently win races then I'm sure more people will start running them or at least trying them, if not then the smaller wheels will probably stick around, but there is always a choice to run what you want. Bigger wheels may or may not actually give an edge but its pretty cool to have that choice.
As for proving which is better? If the top ten riders all decided to run big wheels at the world champs, one of them would still be quite likely to win. It doesn't prove the big wheels are better, it merely suggests that it is likely that they are. They may have made the choice to run bigger wheels because they believed they would have an edge or it may simply be because their sponsor pushed them to run the big wheels to boost sales. Maybe they found no difference in times between tests on both bikes but just picked the bigger wheels for the day? Perhaps the top 10 riders all have a crash somewhere on track and lose 5 seconds and a rider from lower down the ladder wins on their 26" wheels? It doesn't prove anything across one race and trends will only change if it is done repeatedly, as occurred with the change in trend for XC racers towards 29" wheels over a number of years.
I think what DK was getting at was that the only way to even attempt to definitively prove that one wheelsize is better than the other is to run repeat trials across multiple participants for each wheel size on a variety of tracks. The problem with this is that even under such conditions, the shear amount of time it would take to complete all these trials (each wheel size on each track would have to be completed on a separate day with several days rest in between each due to fatigue, DOMS etc affecting the participants) means that the participants' fitness would change across the whole study, meaning that the results lose validity and wheelsize can't be said to account for the difference in speed. Therefore the best way is more likely to be observing trends across multiple WC races as frenchman says, HOWEVER, if all the top riders mistakenly decided to run bigger wheels for the world champs (or were pushed to run them by sponsors), they would all still be on the podium and then the whole industry would probably start pushing these big wheels based on invalid "data".
Anyway, be happy to be even more spoilt for choice than ever before and use whatever you feel makes you quicker. More importantly though, continue building rough tracks to ride and these types of tracks won't go anywhere, regardless of the wheel debate.
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