Gadzooks. How off-track can you get? But this is the internet, so the answer is "utterly".
You misunderstood my comment. That derailleur vs. fixie bit was an almost throwaway illustration to dryly note the ineffectiveness of a small minority to complain about something in wide use by the majority. Fixie riders were once the vast majority, very influential in cycling and they dictated terms on public opinion and competition (it took 38 years for the TdF to legalize the use of a derailleur. The guy below in the picture was instrumental in that). In the present day fixies are a tiny niche (fixies are never considered to be single-speed ebikes, even counting the Babymaker or the Luna Fixed which both took a fixie as their inspiration). As unimaginable as that shift away from fixed gears was then, so too is the inexorable shift to ebike ubiquity unimaginable now... to the haters at least. And they are growing fewer in number.
Fixie vs. derailleur refers back to a specific famous issue of cycling history that translates directly to today's hater/cheater scenario ... and we are slowly seeing the tide turn, just as it once did for fixies and derailleurs.
View attachment 172018
Doesn't that sound familiar if you change the equipment around just a little to be ebike and bike?
Nice pic! Do you mean the Tour de France should be for ebikes?
Desgrange said that in 1902, when he was 37. He and Paul de Vivie, 49, published bike magazines. French races were staged to sell newspapers, magazines and bicycles.
De Vivie had founded a bicycle club in 1882. Often crossing the channel on business, he found English bikes so much better that he joined an English bicycle club. In 1887 he sold his textile business and became an importer. In 1889 he began manufacturing his own English bike, La Gauloise.
That year he was riding a La Gauloise when a reader, smoking a pipe, overtook him, recognized him, and challenged him to a race. He knew he’d need an edge. Copying an English Whippet, he mounted two chain rings in front and two in back.
Back then, the Whippet also had pneumatic tires, which had to be unglued to fix a puncture. It was the first bike with rim brakes. The French say the La Polyceler was the first derailleur, but that’s murky because it never went into production. The 1896 English Gradient was the first production bike with a derailleur, and it was a commercial success. The 1899 New Whippet had freewheel and a 4-speed derailleur, called the New Protean gear. De Vivie imported New Proteans to mount on his La Gauloises.
In 1901, Desgrange’s magazine joined the sponsorship of the 750-mile Paris-Brest race, established in 1891 and limited to French entrants (including a gas-powered Peugeot) to sell newspapers to the patriotic French. The first race was the debut of Michelin pneumatic tires, not yet in production. Their little workshop joined with the little English workshop that made the Humber in sponsoring over-the-hill Charles Terront. Dunlop got wind of it and sponsored Jiel-Laval, who owned a bike shop and had recently won more races than Terront.
Jiel-Laval raced on Michelins because Dunlops were essentially wheelchair tires. The automobile did well on the first day, averaging half the speed of the pneumatic fixies; then it faded. At first, Terront paced Jiel-Laval, but Jiel-Laval had a big advantage. Seeing the enormous profits at stake, Dunlop had hired a support team of eight, meaning one could always be riding alongside in case of a puncture. Terront had only a manager, waiting at each railway station. These tires were so new that Terront had not considered carrying repair tools. In the event of a puncture, he had to walk his bike to the next station, which could be miles ahead.
Jiel-Laval would eat and drink in cafes. Terront didn’t take these breaks because he’d once been poisoned; that’s how much was often at stake for sponsors. Still, after 64 hours, Jiel-Laval was so far ahead that he stopped to get some sleep. Terront passed hours sooner than expected. Jiel-Laval had the advantage of sleep, but instead of overtaking him, he fell farther and farther behind. Terront must have been going twice as fast. He finished in 72 hours. Jiel-Laval needed 80.
Both were world-class endurance racers. The vast difference in stamina was apparently due to the difference in seat position. Both had started out racing high wheelers, and Jiel-Laval’s seat had a similar position relative to the pedals. The English Humber's was farther back, meaning less knee bending at top dead center. A longer power stroke let Terront use an "overdrive" sprocket ratios and still climb hills. In the last 200 miles, he found that he still had the energy to finish the race faster, and his legs were still up to it.
Back to de Vivie. In 1902 the Touring Club de France sponsored a race which, like motorcycle trials, was not for speed but to negotiate a difficult course without putting a foot down. One of the four finishers was a woman, riding a La Gauloise fitted with a New Protean, which Vivie foppishly called a derailleur.
That’s when Desgrange, editor of a competing magazine, said, "I applaud this test, but I still feel that variable gears are only for people over 45. Isn't it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailleur? We are getting soft. Come on fellows. Let's say that the test was a fine demonstration - for our grandparents! As for me, give me a fixed gear!”
He was referring to de Vivie’s age,49. Even in a friendly one-on-one race at 36, he had used gear changes to compete in what his opponent thought was an athletic contest.
There had been no Dunlops in the 1891 race and their rider had come in 8 hours behind, but British and American consumers were led to believe Dunlops had won. Similarly, there was no French gearshift in the 1902 trials, but French consumers took pride in the derailleur as an earthshaking French invention. De Vivie came out with the Cheminot in 1906, which had his version of the New Protean. It flopped. Meanwhile, the British industry had turned its attention to hub transmissions (which I favor).
As a patriot, Desgrange was smarting over the defeat of Napoleon III's invasion of Germany when he was 6. Desgrange started the Tour de France in 1903 to persuade Frenchmen along the route that there was status in riding fast. Such status would make it hard to dodge the draft when Napoleon IV came along. The Tour would be a series of races along France’s borders. That way, patriotic fans could see how France looked on a map and imagine how much bigger the Tour could be if they could annex Germany and Austria in a great war.
As in other sports, mechanical aids were regulated, but a gearshift would have allowed them to pedal while bent forward farther than with a fixie. The eyes of manufacturers lit up with dollar signs. Reduced air drag would mean higher speeds, and the posture would mean less stability. Bicycle racing would become a highly entertaining blood sport, with potentially deadly pileups and cyclists flying off into ravines.
In 1928, Lucien Juy made a deal with Alcion to put his 2-speed derailleurs on the bikes of its team for a particular race. The team revolted. Manufacturers prevailed over Desgrange in 1937. Juy began raking in money with his 3-speed Simplex derailleur. Sales took off after the war when the French and the Italians began riding like racers. Helmet sales also took off, thanks to the delusion that they would keep racers safe. Dead men tell no tales, so who’s to say different? At the height of popularity on the continent, Juy switched to plastic in 1962.
By 1980, derailleurs were widespread in England and America. If 9 cogwheels is the minimum for a quality cassette, all these riders were fools. My brother was one. At 10 he’d easily ridden 40 miles across the Green Mountains on a 3-speed one day and back the next, but he wasn’t interested in bikes until he was a thousand miles away at college and his 1930s Citroen broke down beyond repair. He got around by bicycle and went to Colorado to train with the 1980 US Olympic team. When Jimmy Carter withdrew US participation, he was disappointed. I was relieved. I’m not saying I made phone calls, but if Carter had allowed him to compete, people would still be whispering that I’m the undistinguished brother of the illustrious Olympic cyclist.
He continued to train because he enjoyed it. One day he pedaled more than 300 miles from Greensboro to visit a sister in DC. He wouldn’t have mentioned if he hadn’t gotten torn up as he pedaled home the next day. He was speeding down a long hill in Virginia when an oncoming car veered over the line to force him onto the gravel shoulder. He wouldn’t have been going that fast on a good touring bike, and the seating geometry would have kept him in control.
He gave me one of his bikes to tour Greensboro with him. Now I understood why he spent so much time patching punctured tires, which he sewed and glued back on. Those tires had very little rolling resistance, and getting down over low bars really cut down air drag.
Most derailleur bikes look bad to me because the seats look too far forward to get a long power stroke. His seat was in a good position for that. With two unindexed downtube levers, I had no idea what gear I was in, but that was okay. With a good pedaling position, the wrong gear can be right. I hadn’t ridden a bicycle in 15 years, but I kept up with him as easily as he’d kept up with me when he was 10, going over the mountain range. We used multilane streets posted at 35 and seemed to be keeping up with traffic. It took incredibly little effort.
I was glad when it was over. The low position of the bars would make my stopping distance from 35 very long, however good the brakes were. In traffic, a driver might not see me with my head so low. In that position, I had poor situational awareness behind. In an emergency, the inertia of my upper body could steer the bike out from under me, as had happened to him on the gravel shoulder at maybe 50 mph or faster. On my old upright 3-speed, it would take twice as long to pedal 300 miles, but I’d be safe. If you’re not going to double over to average more than 15 mph, an old Sturmey Archer, with a 1.8 to 1 range, works fine.
I repaid the favor 43 years later, giving him an ebike to tour with me. I told him it was a 1-speed, so I used throttle to get up to speed, then rode it like a push bike. Instead of shifting down on a hill, I’d shift to a PAS level that would give me enough assistance to maintain cadence. Afterward, he said if he was used to riding a motorcycle, he’d like it, but he didn’t like it. So I’m a three-speed guy who would rather not have a derailleur, and he’s an accomplished derailleur guy who would rather not have an ebike.
You can still hope that the Tour de France will one day be a series of ebike races.
