Authored by Mike McDaniel via AmericanThinker.com,
I’ve been a bicyclist all my life, but because I came to serious road racing late in life, I never had the opportunity to be competitive. Oh, I had a few good bikes and wore the required attire, but I was never going to make the medal stand.
I did ride with enough serious riders to understand their compulsions. Among them was doing whatever was necessary to shave every gram of weight possible off their trusty steeds and to make them, and themselves, more aerodynamic. Shaving the legs was mandatory, but I never participated in that ritual. The seconds that might save weren’t going to make any difference for me, nor would drilling holes in this or that component.
If you know the jargon, those were the days when shifters were mounted on downtubes, and carbon fiber was in its infancy. It consisted of round frame tubes glued into metal fittings. Ten-gear cassettes and single chainrings were the hot setup. That dates me, doesn’t it?
Much has changed since those years. Frames can now be entirely made of carbon fiber and tuned for specific kinds of races.
Everything is lighter and stronger, and computer technology has made it possible to fine-tune bike and rider to an amazing degree—particularly female riders’ breasts. Breasts?! Breasts:
Something strange is happening at the Tour de France Femmes this year.
Several women’s WorldTeams
