Building a Campy Crashterium Bike

In article ,
"Gooserider" wrote:

"John Forrest Tomlinson" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 16:43:25 GMT, Jasper Janssen
wrote:

On Thu, 01 Dec 2005 19:02:12 -0500, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

I think you need to re-examine your approach to the sport. Criteriums
are not anymore dangerous than road races -- at least in terms of
crashes that are hard to avoid.

Out of curiosity, do you have personal experience with that? The average
experience with crits seems to be that crashes are much more frequent and
large there.

Lot of racing, used to do a lot of coaching on technique, including
not crashing in races.

That wasn't the question. Are crits more prone to have crashes?

Extrapolating from anecdotal evidence is always perilous, but I happen
to belong to a roughly 50-member racing club, and I did a powerpoint
presentation in order to make fun of the Crash Award nominees at our
recent dinner.

A rough tally of the overly numerous incidents:

4 riders crashed in separate road races, including me.
4 crashes (split between three riders) in crits; one in our training
crits, three in a single very popular and crashy crit.
1 velodrome crash
1 broken hip during a training ride
1 failure-to-unclip 0 mph flop during a training ride (that was me again)
1 fall off a bar stool right after the crash award was given at last
year's dinner
1 rider, on his motorcycle supporting the team, crashed and got 27
screws and 2 plates in his leg

Plus innumerable 'cross crashes and a few MTB falls, none of which count.

That's all the ones I remember. The road race accidents this year caused
much more damage than the crit crashes, both mechanically and physically.

In terms of raw racing, it's tricky. There are far more crit events
available locally than road races: two different mid-week training crit
series May-August, plus at least four other major criteriums that are
open to lower-cat riders. There are major road races about every two or
three weeks, plus a 7-race warm-up series in March.

My guess is that most riders in our club ride more crit events than road
races, and probably spend more racing time in crits than road races,
even though the former events are considerably shorter. I might be
wrong: the time might be closer than I think, depending on an individual
rider and how many non-local events they do. Some of the American stage
races are a big draw.

Crits have a rep for being more crashy, but I think there's no point in
building a special "crash-worthy" bike for them. One rider in our club
wrote off his frame in a road event. It's axiomatic that you should not
race a bike you can't afford to crash, and that applies to pretty much
every form of racing except TTs, where the usual serious crash is
getting hit by a car during an open-course event.

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 04:36:28 GMT, Ryan Cousineau
wrote:

That's all the ones I remember. The road race accidents this year caused
much more damage than the crit crashes, both mechanically and physically.

That's in line with what I've seen over the year.
In a criterium, a typical crash is one rider losing control and
sliding off the road. Maybe taking another rider or two with him Most
everyone is alert and the field is probably strung out, so the crash
doesn't have a big impact.

Big nasty crashes that crack frames and such are probably more common
in road races where the field is together, like down a shallow hill or
bend.

JT


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