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#91
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Steel frames and le Tour
In article
, Scott wrote: Hell, I've owned a number of steel bikes over the years, currently own two, and I've never ridden a lugged steel bike. Current state of the art steel frame building rarely involves lugs. Well, lugs are not common practice, but state-of-the-art steel frame building frequently involve lugs. Indeed, I would think that at this juncture in time the state of the art steel bicycle *is* a lugged bike: http://www.richardsachs.com/ |
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#92
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Jul 10, 2:18*pm, Bret Wade wrote:
Scott wrote: On Jul 10, 1:29 pm, John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:21:47 -0700 (PDT), Scott wrote: The odds for any given rider using a steel frame is not 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 or whatever. *It's 50/50. Is this a joke? No. *It's really quite binary. *Either a rider IS or IS NOT riding a steel frame. *Any attempt at bringing in the odds based on what a sampling of riders may or may not ride may be relevant to you deciding whether or not it's likely that a rider may be using a particular frame, but... for any given rider, it is as simple as IS or IS NOT. Then do you also think that there are 50/50 odds that they are riding a lead bike? Bret If the question is, is the rider using a lead bike vs all other options, then no. While not infinite, there are lot's of non-lead alternatives. If the question is, is the rider using a lead bike or not, then yes, it's a yes/no scenario. |
#93
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Jul 10, 7:04 pm, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote: On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:59:53 -0700 (PDT), Scott wrote: On Jul 10, 9:54 am, John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 08:39:03 -0700 (PDT), Scott wrote: On a slightly related note, I can tell you that there are plenty of riders using carbon fiber bikes that were NOT made by their sponsor. e.g. Gerolsteiner's TT bikes aren't not Specialized bikes, but the decals sure read "Specialized". Yeah, it's possible someone's on a steel bike. I doubt it, but I wouldn't be surprised. Also, just to cement my arrogance, if you *should* be surprised if that was true. Extremely surprised. There is zero reason any rider in the Tour of France should be a on a steel frame and many reasons (both economic, performance and logistical they should not). You should be shocked. Really, you don't think that even a single rider in the field may actually prefer a steel frame to a carbon fiber frame? And that rider (should one exist) may be able to get that steel frame for free from the builder? It's been done before many, many times by lots of riders. What's been done? No reason to definitively conclude that it is not going on now. Let's talk epistomology. I can't prove a negative here and I won't ask you to prove a positive, since you merely said you "wouldnt' be suprised." I'll assume wouldnt' be surprised means there's a 1 in 10 or many a 1 in 100 or even a 1 in 1000 chance of it happenning. I'm saying the chance is far, far less than ever the most generous odds above. Far less than 1 in 1000. Orders of magnitude less. Now, if something that has a 1 in, say, 10,000 or 1 in a million chance of happening happens, among 200 riders, you wouldn't be surprised? Wow. And here's a surrogate. Find a single example of a pro tour or continental level pro team using a steel frame in any UCI-level race in Europe. Try it. Can you find even one? I know that Laurent Brochard is signing his name to high end steel frames in a joint effort with his brother, bikes weigh about 8kg. Last I heard, he wasn't riding the Tour de France. http://www.cycles-laurentbrochard.fr/acier.html -ilan |
#94
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:02:34 -0700 (PDT), RicodJour
wrote: On Jul 10, 4:36*pm, wrote: On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:35:19 GMT, John Forrest Tomlinson Dear Carl. *Did I say you didn't or did I ask? Please shut up now. Dear John, Were you ignorant or not? Incidentally, have you caught up yet? Or do you want to tell me to shut up again if I haven't put 7 more pounds on my bike for your education? Quit trying to hijack the thread. We're beating up on Scott at the moment. R Dear RJ, Okay, let's trade for a moment. If a frame is steel, the odds are that less than 1% of it is carbon. Poor Scott shouldn't quit his day job and head for Las Vegas. ("Hey, there are only two possibilities, either I win or I lose, so it looks like a 50-50 proposition!") Now you explain the odds to John about whether I added 7 pounds to my top tube as he kept begging me to do and then posted the details with photos on RBT. *** Scott can take a little comfort in how tricky probability is. Anyone beating up on him should look into the Monty Hall problem. In "The Drunkard's Walk," Mlodinow quotes a Harvard professor whose glum opinion was that "our brains are not wired to do probability problems very well." (p. 45) Later, Mlodinow quotes Martin Gardner, who said in a Scientific American piece on a problem like the Monty Hall problem that 'in no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory." (p. 56) In his chapter on the Monty Hall problem, Mlodinow gives us this juicy detail: "When told of this [Vos Savant's solution _is_ correct], Paul Erdos, one of the leading mathematicians of the twentieth century, said 'That's impossible.' Then, when presented with a formal mathematical proof of the correct answer, he still didn't believe it and grew angry. Only after a colleauge arranged for a computer simulation in which Erdos watched hundreds of trials that came out 2 to 1 in favor of switching [if the game show host opens one of two doors that you didn't guess and asks whether you want to switch your original guess] did Erdos concede that he was wrong." (p. 49) The Monty Hall problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem Technically, I _know_ that Vos Savant was right and that there really is a huge 2-to-1 advantage if I switch my guess when the game show host opens one of the doors that I didn't choose and asks me if I want to change my mind. But like Erdos, I don't _believe_ it and it makes me angry. (Not being a famous mathematician, I don't have to concede that this is wrong.) Cheers, Carl Fogel |
#95
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Steel frames and le Tour
In article ,
A Muzi wrote: -snip frames- John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: You think team sponsors who are going nuts spending money to get their name into the most televised and photographed bike race in the world wouldnt' care if some "lower-level" rider is riding something different? Wow. Long history of that, actually. Especially in climbs and TT. Indeed, this has been the case for decades and probably less now. There were frame builders who made a good living building bikes for riders, who then sent them to be painted in the team colors. Pegoretti is one such example, allegedly having built frames for Lemond, Indurain, Chiappucci, etc. which were then painted in team colors. Andy Hampsten won at Alpe-d'Huez on a Landshark painted in Merckx Motolora colors, and Lance won the 1993 world champs on a Lightspeed painted to look like a Merckx. Lemond had his frames built by Roland Della Santa for years and painted in the team colors. Sean Kelly stated that he almost always ride Vitus 979 frames which were painted in the team colors; many pros did the same in the 1980s. |
#96
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Jul 10, 10:36 pm, "
wrote: On Jul 10, 12:59 pm, Scott wrote: On Jul 10, 1:29 pm, John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:21:47 -0700 (PDT), Scott wrote: The odds for any given rider using a steel frame is not 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 or whatever. It's 50/50. Is this a joke? No. It's really quite binary. Either a rider IS or IS NOT riding a steel frame. Any attempt at bringing in the odds based on what a sampling of riders may or may not ride may be relevant to you deciding whether or not it's likely that a rider may be using a particular frame, but... for any given rider, it is as simple as IS or IS NOT. So, when you mis-attribute the likelyhood of a given rider riding a steel frame as far less likely than that (like your 1 in 1000 odds) and then try to apply that to the 180 riders at the start of the Tour and come up with something absurd like 1 in 1,000,000 or less, you aren't really applying the proper probability. It makes your argument look stronger to someone who doesn't understand odds, but it's not valid. Consider the question of whether RBR Chief Statistician Robert Chung just threw up in his mouth a little. There are only two possible outcomes, but the odds I would place on the two outcomes are not 50/50. Ben Odds aren't even. That's why they call them odds. That's odd. -ilan |
#97
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Jul 10, 3:31*pm, Tim McNamara wrote:
In article , *Scott wrote: Hell, I've owned a number of steel bikes over the years, currently own two, and I've never ridden a lugged steel bike. *Current state of the art steel frame building rarely involves lugs. Well, lugs are not common practice, but state-of-the-art steel frame building frequently involve lugs. *Indeed, I would think that at this juncture in time the state of the art steel bicycle *is* a lugged bike: http://www.richardsachs.com/ Oh, sh.. now we have to argue over what constitutes 'state of the art'??? |
#98
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Jul 10, 7:41 pm, "
wrote: On Jul 10, 9:05 am, Bret Wade wrote: John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: There is zero reason any rider in the Tour of France should be a on a steel frame and many reasons (both economic, performance and logistical they should not). Agreed. They're all way too young to be retro-grouches. Remember when Mercury/Viatel hired all those Europros and made a big push (just before imploding)? Their bike sponsor was Lemond and they had steel bikes, I think this was before Lemond Bikes got into the aluminum and Dr. Moreau-half-and-half frames. Anyway, as Mercury began to implode, I remember an interview in which one of the Eurodogs was bitching about the backwardness of having to ride steel frames, as if it was a short step from that to having to sling your own tubulars over your shoulder. Ben I like steel fine, but I'm not a Europro I remember trying to convince people 12 years ago on my team who were sponsored by Lemond and Trek to get the steel (if I remember correctly) Zurich as it was much better for the riders who were suited for criteriums and not road racing. In those days the Trek OCLV's seemed pretty slow handling. -ilan |
#99
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:54:40 -0500, Ben C wrote:
On 2008-07-10, John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:37:51 -0700 (PDT), wrote: Thanks for the info. Not an alloy frame to be found. I assume those are are the "official" bikes of the team. It is still theoretically possible that individual riders have different bikes than these, no? (I will not argue that any of them are steel, however). I wouldnt' be surprised to see a rider or two in their on an aluminum frame, especially if the sponsor makes both aluminum and carbon fiber frames. I thought I remembered Liggett saying Contador had a "special titanium climbing bike" for the 2007 Paris-Nice (which he won). I found some pictures: http://www.albertocontadornotebook.i...llery2007.html The bike in most of those pictures is kind of silver coloured, but looks more like carbon fibre from the shape of the tubes (especially in the stage 7 picture). Anyway part of his skull is made of titanium. Dear Ben, Titanium frames were used in the 2006 TDF: http://www.bike-zone.com/photos/2006...pticsArc_All_l :-) The titanium combines strength with light weight--only 17 grams, which help sthe rider develop that noticeabley robust forward thrust that proves that every ounce counts! Cheers, Carl Fogel |
#100
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Steel frames and le Tour
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:00:54 -0700 (PDT), Jay Beattie
wrote: On Jul 10, 11:21*am, wrote: On Jul 10, 1:04*pm, John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: And here's a surrogate. *Find a single example of a pro tour or continental level pro team using a steel frame in any UCI-level race in Europe. *Try it. *Can you find even one? * I know that I can't find one. *It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has. *Yesterday bfd replied with Dede Barry's 2002 world cup frame as an example of a steel frame that was used successfully in pro-level competetion. *That's nearly 6 years ago though. I would be quite surpised if a steel frame were used by anyone in a Grand Tour. *I like and appreciate the ride qualities of a good steel frame but at that level of competetion I would guess that any benefits they provide in terms of "comfort" would be more than negated by those provided by a lighter, stiffer carbon frame. *I might be less surprised to find out that someone used a modern steel frame in a race like Paris-Roubaix. Steel was used in Paris-Roubaix in 2006. See http://tinyurl.com/z4w5y Note the cyclocross-like bike further down the page with conventional 32 spoke wheels, tied and soldered. Jobst would give them an ear full! -- Jay Beattie. Dear Jay, Nice find! Cheers, Carl Fogel |
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