It’s hard to believe. Based on the reactions of many I was expecting carnage, missing fingers and perhaps a few full on amputations.
But no such luck, the Tour of Qatar was boring except for the racing, which was kinda fun to watch as a precursor to the classics.
The UCI gave teams the 2016 go ahead to use the brakes last year after a short trial, but the reaction from the peloton was a near universal, yeah, nah, mixed with fear, uncertaintity and doubt.
“I think that there’s a giant issue, we are basically adding spinning knife blades to our bikes,” Dimension Data’s Tyler Farrar told Velonews at the Tour of Qatar.
“I don’t think it’s impossible to create a little shroud for it that protects the disc, but none of the bikes that have been given to test have that shroud on it. If you see the mass pileups that we have sometimes, I don’t think that we need spinning knives on our bikes.”
That didn't deter ProContinental team Roompot-Oranje Peloton, who mounted the spinning blades of death devices to its bikes for 2016.
In fact the outcry probably encouraged them in hopes of a clear run to every finish as every other team ran away in fear of the rampaging Roompot-Oranje hordes.
The Dutch outfit is now the only team to commit fully to discs this season - with just about everyone else opting to stick with good old fashioned caliper stoppers.
A more practical issue in the Roompot-Oranje Peloton decision to run discs is the wheel change, which for the moment is slower.
But current suppliers, SRAM and Shimano are likely to work out the road specific quirks and the team mechanics and road support crews will become more comfortable with using them in the heat of battle.
All in all it was a disappointing start to the uptake of disc brakes, a real fizzer. I was expecting so much more.
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