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All the fear mongering from this incident is getting ridiculous. Vittoria already investigated the incident and said he hit a rock and broke the rim. This had nothing to do with hookless rims. In fact hooked rims are prone to more impact damage, so it might have been worse. This is more of an indictment of lightweight carbon rims that disintegrate when impacted.
But... but... a tubular would have stayed on in that situation! 🙂
All the fear mongering from this incident is getting ridiculous. Vittoria already investigated the incident and said he hit a rock and broke the rim. This had nothing to do with hookless rims. In fact hooked rims are prone to more impact damage, so it might have been worse. This is more of an indictment of lightweight carbon rims that disintegrate when impacted.
Just when it sounds like the cause of the crash had been identified..."The manufacturers of tire and wheel issued statements suggesting that a big rock was to blame for the accident, not some technical issue with rim or tire. However, neither tire nor rim maker have yet been able to examine the parts involved in the incident, and no rock has been found, so nobody really knows anything specific yet."So I'm just gonna grab another beer and some more popcorn while all this gets sorted out.Below's a link to the article containing the quote... More interesting (IMO anyway) is the science of how hookless rims can be just as safe as rims with hooks.
So Rene Herse is now a trusted source reporting on events in world tour races on another continent?Who do they have as a source that is better than the Lotto Team which says their rider hit an object?Does Rene Herse dispute Vittoria's claim that the impact was sufficient to cut the tire liner?Has Rene Herse looked at the picture it posted in the article. There are rocks visible at the edge of the road right behind the bicycle.
I'm going to have to say that I don't think anyone here has a real position to comment from other than their own, extremely limited experiences. Pro riders are worried according to Adam Hansen and they ride more in a month than most here will in a year. To me, the simple fact is that the risk is pretty high meaning that the potential effects could be really significant if your tire were to blow off at the right(wrong) moment. What's wrong with following this subject? There is a virtually unlimited combination of rims and tires so just because your specific (or maybe a few) examples have proven reliable for your riding style and your conditions simply does not justify sweeping conclusions about all combinations therefore being reliable. Why act offended because you think everything is fine and there is nothing to worry about? If you don't care, don't care and move on.Lastly, the tubular comments are just mindless; I rode them for 30 years and many times I was saved by the fact that the tire stayed in place when I had a high speed flat. The ignorance around tubulars is astounding and that clearly applies to the story recalled above. Frankly, I would challenge someone to roll a tubular while riding straight unless an excessive amount of fresh glue is involved. Yes, I'll take that bet. I used to hear all about how difficult and expensive tubulars were from folks who had never ridden one let alone glued one up.. A properly inflated tubular on a clean rim with no glue is pretty hard to remove.
Frankly I don't need to try to roll a tubular on a straight simply because I got stuck behind a crash which was caused by a rolled tubular so I know it can happen. Tubulars, like everything else in cycling is a compromise. I'd rather to have to repair a flat with a clincher than a tubular. Believe what you want.
I'm following this as well as I have recently moved to tubeless on the road having had it on gravel for a few years. It sounds like a lot of it revolves around narrow(compared to gravel) tires on wider, like 25mm, road rims.. I think the wider tires typical for gravel are do not really cause much concern, but I have to wonder how much of a difference that really makes.
Bingo. There is no proof offered at this point the crash was caused by the tire blowing off the rim. None. The team says that isn’t what happened, the tire maker says it isn’t. They say it was a rock, and if they got caught lying about that it would def be serious trouble for them. I maintain that if the photo didn’t dramatically show the insert hanging out like guts there would be no controversy. It would just be another photo of a bike with a flat.More to the point none of the discussion over this is relevant to gravel. riders now have literally hundreds of thousands of mies of successful problem free use of hookless on gravel. I have 6000 miles of that myself. It’s a non-issue for our community.