This week we turn to a sport that has yet to be mentioned in this blog, cycling.  One of my personal favorite sports and something that nearly everyone has the capacity to enjoy.  From booking it to class, to climbing to the top of your favorite hill or mountain, to the weekend ice cream ride, bicycling is both practical and fun.  For a select few however, this sport represents a way to compete and see who is the fastest and can endure the most physical exertion.

Many will know of professional cycling from the Tour de France, and those who are more knowledgeable may have heard of the Vuelta a España or the Giro d’Italia.  These events showcase the some of the most elite athletes in the world as well as the cutting edge in performance technology.  Governing all of this action is the Union Cycliste International or UCI.

The UCI is responsible for nearly everything you might see along a race course: water soigneurs, UCI; team cars and medics, UCI; specific and regulated sock height, you guessed it, UCI as well.  From a practical and racing standpoint, having the UCI as a governing body helps to keep the cycling world in check when it comes to cheating and tampering.  There is an argument to be made that for all the good they do, they are also responsible for holding back the improvement in cycling technology.

Probably the most pronounced regulation that the UCI exposes is the weight limit on a race bike.  Set at 6.8kg in the year 2000, today, technology allows us to build bicycles that are significantly lighter than that weight restriction, but unfortunately they are not allowed to race.  Those who have bikes that come under the weight restriction must add weight to the frame in order to comply with the rules.  Part of the reasoning behind this regulation is for safety, to ensure that the bicycle will be stable throughout a race where a cyclist will put very high demands on the frame and components.  However, with Trek, one of the major bicycle manufacturers in the world, now producing a line of bikes that comes in under UCI regulations, and selling them to the public, safety must be of no question.  Today, the weigh restriction appears to be a limit set long ago and very much in need of an update.

Other regulations from clothing, to the aerodynamics of the bike, to the actual structure that the frame forms hinder the engineers and their pursuit of the ultimate road bike.  Speaking of weight, companies that have allowed themselves to escape the box of professional racing have created bikes in the realm of 4kg, a full 2kg under the UCI weight restriction!  Imagine what racers could do with this kind of technology, the records they could break.

Ultimately, the governance of any sport comes down to an attempt to make the game or competition as fair as possible.  While there are always shortcomings when regulations are imposed, it never hurts to see what would be possible without them.  Manufacturers who are producing bikes with the best technology and intended for consumer use should be proud to know that they will eventually have led the way towards a change in regulations.