Steel frames and le Tour

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:28:06 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:

In article ,
Howard Kveck wrote:

In article ,
Tim McNamara wrote:

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.

Tim, I believe Motorola was officially riding Caloi frames in '93,
which were a sub-brand of Merckx.

One of the years they did ride Calois, good recall on your part; I had
forgotten about that. I don't remember if it was 1993 or not. The
Calois team frames were built by Merckx's factory, of course. But my
poster of Lance crossing the finish line in Oslo in 1993 looks to have
Merckx decals rather than Calois. A friend has one of Motorola's frames
built for Max Sciandri, lugged steel Merckx in that case. I don't
recall what year that one was from.

Dear Tim & Howard,

"Lance's Caloi-branded Litespeed, winner at the `93 Worlds in Norway":

http://www.bikeradar.com/gallery/art...ss-16248?img=6

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

dave a wrote:
Paul G. 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.

Holy ****! I'm buying lottery tickets now that I know my odds of
winning are binary! I'm either going to win, or not. 50/50!
-Paul

Buying a ticket doesn't really change the odds much. The difference
between zero and 10e-49 isn't much.


you're missing the point - paul's odds are not 50/50 - he's not very
good at math.

Davey Crockett wrote:
a �crit profondement:

| 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

Flip a coin - there are two outcomes - a head or a tail

Therefore the chances are even.

And even if one gets three heads and one tail in say four tosses,
continually tossing the coin until the number ot trials/tests
approaches infinity, the outcomes will close towards 50/50




but that's not correct reasoning. the probabilities are among the
population of frames, and as we've seen, the population is in the
hundreds, with the steel frame population counting somewhere between one
and zero. and probably the latter. that's not 50/50.

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).

tube shape definitely indicates carbon.



Anyway part of his skull is made of titanium.

On Jul 10, 6:06*pm, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:28:02 -0700 (PDT), Scott

wrote:
Let's use poker as an example, since many of us have either played the
game or have seen it played on TV.

I haven't played much, but sure would love to play it with you.

If we were to play, I'd suggest you bring two large sacks of money. I
don't play much, either, but as it turns out I do pretty well at it.

bfd wrote:
On Jul 7, 11:22�am, wrote:
Anyone know the last year a steel frame was used by a racing cyclist
in the TdF?

Not sure about the TdF, but here's the last steel frame to win any
kind of championship:

http://www.bikespecialties.com/site/peloton4.html

Btw, that's Dede Barry's 2002 world cup steel frame with carbon fork.
Here's her description of it:

"I wanted a steel bike, for durability and strength,

just because someone can ride fast, or likes their frames to look purty,
doesn't understand their materials. cfrp is much superior to high
strength steel, ti or aluminum in fatigue.


with the vintage
Mariposa lugs. He ordered the lightest steel available, pieced it
together with the lugs, placed a lightweight, stiff carbon fork on it
and painted the whole bike, including the stem and fork, light and
royal blue. We chose Campagnolo components and he had it all built up
for me in two weeks, just in time to get dialed in on it before the
race."

On Jul 10, 7:30*pm, RicodJour wrote:
On Jul 10, 5:28*pm, Scott wrote:





On Jul 10, 2:03*pm, RicodJour wrote:

On Jul 10, 2:21*pm, Scott wrote:

Now, back to your initial paragraph. *You don't understand
probability. *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. *They either are, or are
not, using a steel frame. *The odds would be different if we defined
our terms differently, say, what are the odds a rider would choose
frame A (steel) vs frame B (Ti from builder x) vs frame C (Ti from
builder y) vs frame D (carbon fiber from xyz) vs frame E (carbon fiber
from abc) and so on.

You keep using that word, odds. I do not think it means what you think
it means.

What you meant to say, and probably would have said, if you weren't at
_odds_ with people that disagreed with you, is that there are two
possibilities - either a steel frame or another frame. *Both the odds
and probability of a rider in the Tour day France riding a steel frame
are extremely remote - roughly akin to you admitting that, "okay, I'm
wrong." *Deal with it.

Let's use poker as an example, since many of us have either played the
game or have seen it played on TV. *If you watch poker on TV, the
commentators often refer to the odds of a given card being played.
The numerical odds are clearly defined, because there is a finite set
of possibilities which are easily shown. *There is no human element to
the odds of a given card being played.

Scott, I hope you're not a gambler as your grasp of what constitutes
odds and probabilities is, well, shaky at best.

Let's incorporate your "human element" into cycling - based on recent
ASO UCI interactions it's unlikely there are real people making these
decisions (probably a SchwartzSoft side project for pocket money).

Say that a rider wanted to ride a steel bike. *The sponsor doesn't
want him to - they want to get what they're paying for. *The type of
publicity that would be generated in this totally dope free tour
(management excepted) if a rider makes the podium on an other-than-his-
sponsor's bike would not reflect well on the sponsor. *His team
doesn't want him to ride a "funny bike" as sponsor money would be
threatened, and the team mechanics don't want him to as standard bikes
are easier for them to deal with.

Even if all other differences between steel and carbon were equal,
obviously a stretch, there are forces that would prevent a rider from
expressing that individuality outside the corporate fold. *You want a
custom bike? *Fine, we'll make it for you, or we'll let you ride on a
bike that is close enough to be rebadged and not cause a ruckus for
us. *Steel doesn't fit the bill.

Think of it this way, if we flipped a coin and you _see_ it come up
tails, and I'm holding a gun to your head, you're still going to say
heads, aren't you? *You don't even know if there are bullets in the
gun, but you'll say heads anyway. *It's like that.

R- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I've not tried to pass myself off as an expert on probability, and
perhaps have used a few terms loosely. The FACT remains it is
possible that someone is riding on a steel frame, and the FACT remains
that if they were I wouldn't be surprised. I've admitted that I don't
think it's very likely.

On Jul 10, 5:52*pm, wrote:


They're pros. They ride what they're paid to ride. They aren't
fetishists who see the bicycle as a singular work of art with an
idealized form. For racers, bicycles are tools to be used and
discarded when worn out. No different than the way a carpenter sees a
hammer or circular saw. As one pro once told me, "We would ride
shopping carts if we were paid to

Or Peugeot PX-10's. Owen Mullholland reported that Thevenet had his
chainrings changed daily when he won the TDF riding a Peugeot PX-10 as
they were "ground to powder".
-Paul

Bob Schwartz wrote in news:CCzdk.1880
:

William Asher wrote:
RicodJour wrote:

Quit trying to hijack the thread. We're beating up on Scott at the
moment.

This is turning into a nice thread. I love July around here.

I feel like I should start a "Philly Sucks" thread, just to see
what turns up.

Carl seems like a new version for you. Sort of like maybe Tom Vista, an
upgrade that people at first like even less than the old version, yet
everyone will still use because, well, they're use to Tom XP.

--
Bill Asher

On Jul 10, 5:03*pm, Ryan Cousineau wrote:

You're a big dumbass riding an astoundingly dumb argument into the
barriers, head down like Abdoujaparov.


Yeah, baby!
http://tinyurl.com/6rzrfl

Damn, that guy knew how to crash!
-Paul