- Today I'm in mid Wales and I've
not just come here for the
stunning backdrop behind
but instead I'm going to meet
a gentleman who is actually
re-designing and re-thinking
aerodynamics when it comes to
road racing and time trials.
And while reckon you're going to
absolutely love it because,
get this,
he's even having his own handlebars
made for him in Taiwan.
(low electronic sounds)
(upbeat electronic music)
Right, here we go!
Couple of bikes left there for me to check out
in privacy.
I've got to say,
these handlebars, they are different
to anything I've every seen before.
They remind me kind of, I don't know,
like at trekking bar 'cause they
load of different options for you to
put your hands on or anything.
But they're definitely not for a,
for a, relaxed ride I don't reckon.
This is certainly for a bit of aero-gains.
They are pretty long, I've got to say.
So, hence why they've - both of these bikes
have got short stems on.
We've got a road bike here with disk breaks,
but ya, like I say, big old handlebars.
And then on this one, its a time trial frame,
but we've got again, road bars on it.
We've got an aero front break.
I like that, it's pretty cool.
And, I'll tell you what,
these cranks, they are pretty short.
Ya, 155 mil cranks.
I don't know what to say about this, really,
but let's go meet the guy behind it, David.
So, I'm going to try and ask him
your questions too,
'cause I reckon I'll be thinking
what exactly you're thinking.
David, great, thank you so much for
well, taking me to quite literally
the middle of nowhere.
But we're not here to talk geography.
What have you done?
- Well...
- Everyone's going to be wondering this.
They've seen the beautiful shots.
- Yeah.
- Tell us, talk us through it.
- [David] Yeah, well, as all good ideas
come to someone
they came to me in the middle of the night
and I was just wondering how could I get faster
on my road bike.
Because I'm quite into my aerodynamics
and getting faster,
and using technology to get
as fast as possible.
And I was just thinking that,
obviously, there's nothing to say that
aerodynamics don't matter in a road race
and primarily a lot of it is down to your
frontal area.
On my previous bike I had 42, 40-centimeter bars,
quite a short set-up 'cause I've got a very,
for me, 'cause I've got quite a long body.
And when I got in the aerodynamic position
I ended up, my knees were inside my elbows,
my elbows are splayed out,
and I wasn't particularly aerodynamic.
And if I was trying to get up for sailer effort
I'd be using up far too much energy.
So I thought, how can I get my arms
in front of my body, into that sort of,
quasi time-trial position and get some
free speed basically.
- Yeah, 'cause we see a lot of guys
sort of imitating that, you know,
you see it when you watch the Tour de France
or anything like that,
people sort of drooping their hands over
the front.
And for anyone who's tried that at home
they probably know it's not the most,
it's not the most secure... - It's not the most stable...
- to be playing around with
- Yeah, I thought, how can I do something
similar to that,
potentially more aerodynamic,
but yet still have better control of the bike,
being able to access my gears,
access my breaks if I need to.
- Well, that's presumably how we got to this.
Now, we did obviously talk before
I arrived today, and I know you have got
some developments of these handlebars,
which I'm super interested to see.
But, just talk us through, then,
this set up here.
What have you got?
- So, the bars, we've got very narrow bars.
These are, at the drops, 25 centimeters wide.
However, they are flat, so they are about
as wide as a 38, 40 bar in the drops.
So that gives you the control under the stand,
or if you're sprinting.
However, when you're on the tops,
if you're climbing
or if you're getting aero,
you don't need that width because you're not,
you're not pulling on the bars,
you're not trying to get any leverage.
And if you see any of the world top pros climbing
quite often they'll have their hands
virtually touching anyway,
so it doesn't make a difference, really,
when it comes down to the control
of the bike.
And the bars angle in slightly,
so then we get a bit of overlap with the tops
of the bars which are aero-profiled,
tiny little bit of padding,
and sort of double-wrapped bar tape here.
- Yeah, yeah there is,
it's like gel almost,
it's a bit like a wrist support for a
keyboard or mac.. - Yeah, so I've made
my own gel pads to go underneath.
- Blimey. (laughs) It's like another (overlapping dialogue)
- You can access your breaks
in this position, here.
But the most aerodynamic and most comfortable
position is you sort of hold onto
the levers here, and you can, because I've
got my eTap here, I can still change gear
with my little fingers.
- Well that's the thing,
I guess really when we see, you know,
the guys, like I've already mentioned in,
you know, the World Tour races.
When they've got their hands just drooped
up there they have no control.
You know, they, it's quite, quite a movement
isn't it to the actual... - Minimal control,
you've got your hands here,
supposedly for a large pot-hole or whatever
you could easily come off.
It's quite hard to maintain that position
and keep your arms in the right position.
And also you do see them, that they sort of
have their arms spread like that,
it's potentially not as aerodynamic
as a fixed dialed-in position.
So, getting here allows you to relax
your shoulders, shrug them in,
and get really small at the front.
- Yeah, and what sort of extension then
are these bars?
'Cause they look, they, you know,
do look really, really long. - So, so these, so a typical
bar would have a reach of about
seven to eight centimeters.
The reach on this bar, I think is, sixteen-
fifteen, sixteen centimeters.
So, then to get within the constraints
of the UCI rules that you can't
be more than 5 centimeters in front of
the front hub.
So what I do then is I couple that with a really
short stem.
I've also found if I put a long stem on this
and have these long reach bars,
that is when your bike starts to feel a bit
strange when you're trying to get out the saddle.
So, I've found the control aspect is more the,
how far your hands are in front of the front hub
rather than the actual width.
- Yeah, and how long then, I mean,
when you climb on the hoods what's
that like to feel?
Is it a bit, a bit twitchy? - Ah, no, not...
- 'Cause, in my mind it's because of the,
the, how narrow they are.
- Ah, no, it's not twitchy at all.
Climbing in the saddle's absolutely fine.
Climbing out of the saddle absolutely
going for it, it feels a bit different,
I suppose,
because the bars are slightly narrower.
You have to put more of a force to swing
you bike side to side.
And you do feel that a bit if you're fatigued
at the end of a race and you're trying to
get out of the saddle.
However, I've, I've found that you can negate
that by climbing in the drops,
because the drops are wide. - I used to love seeing...
(overlapping dialogue)
Yeah, yeah and old Rick climbing on the drops.
There's something so cool about that.
But hard as well. (laughs)
But you've got, so on there you've got
a seventy mil stem but on your other bike there,
you've got, is it a slightly different flare
on the drops, or? - Ah no (overlapping dialogue)
Well, those bars are slightly wider
so this is a slightly less extreme.
- Right.
- So this is the bike I have used the last
couple of times in road races and crits.
These are 3 centimeters wide in here,
so they're twenty-eights.
- They're twenty-eights! It's so narrow!
- These are wide, these are wide
(overlapping dialogue)
- What I guess is I'm like a forty-two now
though, it feels like
- I bet it feels like a truck
- It feels like a truck, it feels really strange.
However, anyone jumping onto the bike
they're first response is,
woo, it doesn't feel that strange.
- Really?
- Yeah, preconception is, is you can't remember
the control of your bike,
and so they feel really narrow.
But actually, it actually feels
reasonably natural.
- Yeah, 'cause for me, when I'm riding a lot
I don't always ride on the hoods.
I find it more comfortable just riding the bend.
And I reckon, just right there - Yeah, you can
You can ride, and that would be the equivalent
to a...
- I've always looked for my breaks,
I just went to look for them then.
- Yes (overlapping dialogue) I'm sure you could
put satellite breaks on them.
But, yeah, so you could ride like that.
Obviously you can't access the brakes
and the gears as well.
You can put, you can put satellite shifters here.
But that would actually give you an up-,
more upright position akin to a conservative
road bike position.
I've gone for the more extreme,
as long as possible within the rules
and just cause I, I want to be stretched out
and be as aerodynamic as possible.
- You can see I don't race anymore
because I was thinking,
like, comfort and everything like that
whereas you're just like, no.
I want to go all out comfort.
- [Dave] So, I've got a negative degree
stem on here just to cancel out the fact
that I've gone with a
fifty-nine centimeter frame,
largest frame size possible with
the Moriarty bike.
- Oh, right! And what's the reason
you went for the fifty-
- Yeah, so the problem with the fifty-nine
just so I can get long enough,
'cause I think if I had a fifty-four, fifty-six,
you can imagine if I was in the-
if I was in that position I would then
be contacting, my knee would contact my elbow
as it would do on, on my previous road bike
with normal bars, which is why you see people
on the hoods, they have their knees are
within their elbows, confined within their elbows
and their arms are out, increasing
their frontal area and making them slower.
- Brilliant. Do you know what?
I'm looking forward to seeing how you went
from a normal pair of bars to this.
And also, I want to know more about these
155 mil cranks.
- So, they're not that commonplace in road racing
around the world and in Britain.
There's been some anecdotal evidence that
an aggressive position short of cranks
open up your hip angle and basically
put your muscles into their more effective
range of motion and allow you to lose less power
when you're getting low.
And I've managed to do some research and we found
that with all subjects
and aggressive time trial position,
they put out more power with the short cranks.
They lost more power relative to an upright
position going low with long cranks you lose
a lot of power and I find that some people
maintained that power or lost less
with the short cranks once they're in
a time trial position.
So I've just transferred that over
because I'm basically,
when you're getting aero,
is there's a time trial position
so you don't want to be compromised by closing
off your hip angle.
- It's, what I find fascinating,
is that it's kind of, over 20 years on from when
guys like Indurain, Romingood, guys like this
were doing their record - Yeah, they were riding
one-eighty cranks because they wanted to get,
they were, it was a slightly flawed thinking,
that they wanted the cranks to get the leverage,
but that's not, that's not what you need,
that's only 1 lever arm in a bicycle.
If you want, you want to get more leverage
you just change into an easier gear.
And, spin a higher cadence.
- Right, and just looking at your
wheels and tires as well, well it looks to me
that this is still what I find amazing,
is that so many road races are going to
wider and wider tires and these are what-
twenty-eight, thirties, something like that?
I mean, twenty-eights we're starting to see
here and there, but, you know
a lot of riders are still stuck on twenty-fives.
- Yeah, so these are twenty-eight mil wide
Conti tuber tires, but on a 30 mil wide rim,
which is pretty wide, it flattens the profile
out of the tire a bit, makes it
a little bit wider.
It's just trying not to adversely affect
the aerodynamics as well,
so we've got this nice, smooth transition
between the side well of the tire and the rim.
- Right, we've sat down now and we're going to go
through the evolution of these handlebars,
which you've been involved with designing
and building.
But I mean, just for a bit of perspective,
here's a pair or normal handlebars.
And after playing around with David's bars,
that sounds a bit weird,
but in all honesty, it's exactly what
has just happened.
These feel massive, right, they feel so wide.
Well these are, I'm guessing forty-two
is that right? - Forty-two.
- We've got a normal forty-two bar,
sort of shallow drop, that compact bars.
But we've got here now,
well all of the different designs.
So talk me through them, whilst I still think
these are huge, but they're not.
- Yeah, the evolution, yeah.
So these bars are the Nitto Rondinaire bars.
These are made by a Japanese company.
These are the same bars
that Jan-Wilhelm van Schip rides
and caused a bit of controversy in the World Tour
for having his levers angled in
and being ultra narrow.
Um, I started to play around with them.
Actually, this is car body filler
that I was trying to work out if these were
carbon bars, with a nice aero profiled surface,
how they'd feel.
They worked, but not brilliantly,
'cause you're holding onto the lever here.
Actually, I found that you could get quite aero,
but you're putting a lot of pressure
on your wrists and you had the same problem
that your triceps would fatigue
and it wouldn't be that comfy.
And that's why I discovered that I need to be
riding a frame with a long reach
to get myself long enough to be able to
still get the position I require
within the UCI regulations.
So the top tube needs to be really long
rather than just having a really long stem,
because it's not going to be allowed
and it feels - it doesn't feel right.
So, then I contacted a tube bending company.
I drew them a little diagram and said,
I want the bend here, I want it to be, you know,
however many centimeters.
And, ah, it went really well.
But as you can feel, like quite heavy.
- Yeah, fairly heavy.
- They're about 500 grams I think.
And they're, they're actually relatively robust.
Though, I had to come up with my own shims
to get them to fit the standard stem,
because they- - They're not your usual
coke can, you know - No, yeah, exactly, yeah.
A couple of coke cans.
And then you, you had the issue
with the lever clamps.
- Of course.
- It was actually too narrow for the,
for the lever clamping area, so I had to,
I had to put a little bit of tape underneath,
as you can see.
- We've gone from, well, what are these?
These are thirty-two aren't they?
- I think so, we need to get a tape measure out.
But they're not that much narrower,
no that, that much narrower.
But, a little bit narrow, but they allow you
to get, again, they allow you to hold onto levers
and get this support then, so you can hold
the aerodynamic position.
And then this is literally the same,
the same bars, with the shim in place
the (mumble) and then for the stem.
- Brilliant.
- So, I rode these around quite a lot
throughout the winter on my, sort of,
gravel bike, that was riding around.
- Did you go off-road with these as well?
- I have done, yeah!
- Yeah?
- It worked, it worked.
I just had my built in suspension and the bars
and the fact that they're so long and they flex
- (laughs) I never thought that way.
- And then there's an intermediate stage,
which on my current gravel bike,
which were basically these bars created by
a company in Taiwan called Feris, whose,
whose sponsors are very open to ideas
such as this, so, great for me.
They made me some bars that were basically
this design but with a standard, oversize,
the arm by 8 millimeter and clamping area
and obviously quite a bit lighter as well.
So I tried those out and they worked really well,
did a few road races with them.
Though I thought, I was trying to work out
how I could improve the design, again,
I found that you had to angle the levers in
quite a lot to then, to get your arms tucked in.
So I thought, maybe this would work.
So, the next generation...
- Just need to hold these up
just so you can see it.
- Yeah.
So the next generation are actually,
they're narrower again.
These are twenty-eight centimeters at the hoods.
So, I had two versions-
a twenty-eight centimeters and twenty-five.
So, twenty-five was on the Time trial frame.
That were you start to feel a little bit
impeded by the width, when you're getting
out of the saddle, though I found twenty-eight
to be a good balance, actually, I can smash it
out of the saddle up a hill in the hoods
and it feels fine.
But it's twenty-five, it feels slightly-
- Seven centimeters narrower,
it's what what I would ride.
- Yeah. - I think on each side.
- Whereas twenty-eight feels fine.
So, these angle inwards, and the thinking behind
that was, I can have the levers mounted straight,
it gives me a little extra reach as well.
But, you'll more easily get that overlap
with the tops of the bars.
And I had created the flared bars so that you've
got the control in the drops.
So, if you actually look at them
they will be about the same width, as,
I mean a bit, a bit narrower
- Little bit narrower.
- Same width as a pair of thirty-eights.
- Which is what a lot of... - A lot wider.
- Yeah, in fact, they are wider.
- Quite a bit wider than
the thirty-eights and the drops.
So, you don't actually have the issue of the
sprinting, you know,
it's not, it's not noodle-y, or really narrow,
in the drops if you're descending or sprinting.
It feels quite natural.
- Blimey, I mean, okay,
So, I've got to ask the question.
Cycling is so traditional.
You know, there's,
when I look at this
and you know, there's the Scottish link,
what I think is Graeme Obree, you know,
and a guy who, as a teenager, I was looking
at his stuff, I was amazed with,
but there was such a backlash, right,
from the public, from the Federation,
and all sorts like that.
Have you faced anything?
- (laughs) I think I'd be lying if I said no.
Though, yeah, I think a lot of people
don't liked change, don't like people
doing things differently.
And just because of the way it looks,
it looks different.
People, you know, say, oh it looks ridiculous
or it don't look very stylish.
Or, who's that idiot riding the bike with
the funny bars.
But, I think, I think we need to be a bit more
open minded and think about, well,
why has he done this?
There must be a reason behind it.
And it's actually because I've sat down
and thought about how can I make myself faster.
It's not because I was to look silly.
- (laughs)
- It looks a bit different, however,
however, I think when I'm in that area position,
holding the levers and getting tucked in, I think
it looks quite, it looks quite good.
It looks like a time trial position.
It looks a bit different when you're climbing
and your hands are really
close together, granted.
But yes, so I have faced quite a public backlash.
I've had World Tour riders
weighing in on Twitter.
Though I've had other open-minded
guys defending me.
Quite a lot of the guys from the Hublot bike in
the Ribble set up who, again,
think about aerodynamics. - (overlapping chatter)
- They have been, yeah, they again,
they have been, they've been defending me.
And then guys like Michael Hutchinson and
Rob Hales, who obviously famously,
are thinkers in the sport, and have used
aerodynamics to their benefit.
They've, actually, also publicly defended me.
- What's next?
Anything, or not?
- I'm not sure.
I've got a day job to go back to,
so I'm just starting training as a GP
here in mid-Wales, which is why we've moved
here from Glasgow.
I've got a few more ideas.
I think this needs to be effective.
Ideally, they'd make them out of carbon,
have a nice flat profile,
and the design maybe needs to be changed
slightly just so you don't have that
contact issue.
Which on one of my previous prototypes
I didn't have an issue at all.
But as I found, when I'm riding,
when I'm in the drops I'll ride this slightly,
slightly bent arm and it's not been an issue
for me, you just, like it's just
personal preference.
I got a few more things.
Obviously I've been experimenting with
my crank length and I've got,
I've done some actual genuine research.
With that, I'd be interested to try out
a mid-foot cleat position for time trials,
because in theory, there could be, there could be
a power benefit and a benefit to when you're
getting fatigued, you fatigue, the calf muscles
will fatigue less and you'll be able to transfer
the power to the bike in a time trial position.
But that's a, for road racing that might be,
that might be something that's perhaps a no-go
in a road race.
But for a time trial, I think, a cleat
in the middle of your foot might, might well,
might well be an advantage.
That would be something I'll
be experimenting with.
- Less issue with toe overlap and everything.
- Yeah, yeah so on a road bike there would be,
you know, there would be toe overlap, I think,
unless you use 120 cranks, perhaps (laughs)
- (laughs) Now we're talking!
There we are, a little look into some
aero-gains that maybe you could be
doing at home, too.
Let me know what you think of them down there in
the comments section below.
I'm very keen to find out.
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