The innovations that revolutionized road bicycles
The first documented cycling race in history dates back to 1868. Seven cyclists participated, riding wooden bicycles with iron wheels and fixed gears. It took place on the outskirts of Paris, on a circuit just over a kilometer long. Nothing like today’s road bikes, which are extremely light, with carbon frames, electronic transmissions, and cassettes with 11 or more speeds.
With the rise of competitive cycling, the demand for lighter, more efficient, and more technological bikes also increased. This process has not only revolutionized road cycling, but many of these innovations have been adapted to the world of mountain bikes, where performance, safety, and versatility also make a difference.
Below we review the 10 most important innovations in the history of the road bicycle, many of which have also left their mark on the development of modern mountain bikes.
1- Pneumatic tires
Today, it is unthinkable for someone to start the Tour de France with a bicycle equipped with wooden rims and iron tires. However, until the end of the 19th century, bicycle wheels were like this: very heavy, very rough, not very maneuverable, and with a high risk of breaking upon impact (wood splinters easily in a high-speed accident). In 1887, John Dunlop developed the first modern tire. Replacing the rigidity of iron and wood with the comfort of rubber marked the first great revolution in cycling, as it allowed cyclists to ride more comfortably and at a faster pace. If you want to get an idea of how revolutionary Dunlop's invention was, in 1869 the first recorded road race took place between Paris and Rouen. The winner, the Briton James Moore, took 10 hours and 45 minutes to complete the 123 kilometers of the route. From 1890 onwards, cyclists quickly adopted rubber tires, especially after Michelin perfected Dunlop's design and launched the first disposable tire. This helped give rise to the first great classics, such as the Liège–Bastogne–Liège
or the Paris-Roubaix More than 125 years after rubber tube wheels appeared, Dunlop's innovation is still relevant. There have been some technological advances, such as tubeless in mountain biking or the introduction of tubular wheels. But broadly speaking, road bike wheels are still based on an air-inflated tube under a tire.
2- The rear derailleur
Until 1937, when derailleurs were first introduced in the Tour de France, it was common for rear wheels to have two cogs of different sizes, but one on each side of the axle. The usual way to change the bike's gearing was to get off, remove the wheel, flip it, and remount it. This limited the number of gears bikes could have to two, and forced cyclists to get off at the start of each climb to put the wheel in the shorter gear position. When the descent began, they had to flip the rear wheel again to align the chainring with the smaller cog side. As we said earlier, the first edition of the Tour de France in which a gear system was used that did not require the cyclist to get off the bike was in 1937. However, the derailleur had already been invented several years before. In the first decade of the 1900s, several gear change systems appeared, although their operation was far from today's. They consisted of rods that moved the chain from one cog to another. It was in the 1930s that the cable-actuated parallelogram derailleur system appeared, which was improved in the mid-1960s thanks to a Suntour patent. But the great innovation in terms of gear groups came in 1985, when Shimano introduced its synchronized shifting system, which is still used today. Besides the Japanese manufacturer, the other two major gear group manufacturers are the American brand SRAM and the Italian Campagnolo. Shimano and SRAM have gear groups for road and mountain biking, while Campagnolo only makes groups for road bikes.
3- Quick releases
Imagine the following situation: you are climbing the Tourmalet during a Pyrenean stage of the Tour de France. Suddenly, you get a flat tire and have to get off the bike to change the tube. Or you simply need to change gears to start the climb, as was the case before the invention of derailleurs. In the cold, rain, and wind you have to loosen the bolts that hold the wheel axle. Not only is it uncomfortable, but it also wastes time. Well, this was the usual situation until 1927, when Campagnolo patented a system that allowed the wheel to be released with a simple lever mechanism. That innovation marked the introduction of quick releases to road cycling, which today are commonplace not only in the peloton but also on the vast majority of bicycles. Quick releases have helped save time and effort when replacing a flat tire, avoiding the annoying task of having to loosen and tighten nuts with a fixed wrench or spanner.
4- Clipless pedals
In the 1980s, Look was inspired by the ski boot binding system to launch the first clipless pedals on the market. Until then, cyclists secured their feet to the pedals using a system of straps or an aluminum harness. Sometimes this was dangerous, since in the event of an accident or loss of balance it was not easy to remove the foot from the pedal to support oneself on the asphalt and avoid falling. The idea of Look to create a quick-release mechanism that made it easier to clip and unclip the foot from the pedal was a revolution in several areas. The first was safety. The new clipless pedal system made it easier to take the foot off the pedal without having to undo straps. The second reason why clipless pedals are one of the 10 great innovations in road cycling has to do with performance. Having the foot anchored in a fixed position on the pedal helped improve pedaling efficiency, allowing cyclists to better harness the power of each pedal stroke. The first professional cyclist to use this anchoring system in the Tour de France was Bernard Hinault in 1985. Hinault won his fifth Tour using clipless pedals.
5- Time trial extensions
The 1989 Tour de France witnessed a historic event. Never before had the winner of the French round been crowned champion with such a narrow margin as the one achieved by the American Greg LeMond over the Frenchman Laurent Fignon. Fignon arrived at the final stage as leader, with a 50-second advantage over LeMond. Everyone took it for granted that the Frenchman would be crowned Tour de France champion on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. He only needed to maintain those 50 seconds in the final 24.5-kilometer time trial that closed the race. No one predicted that LeMond would be able to snatch the yellow jersey from him with such a small margin of kilometers left. But the American surprised everyone by riding at the highest pace ever seen in a time trial in the history of the French round. His average speed was 54.545 kilometers per hour, using an aggressive 54x11 gear ratio. Greg LeMond not only won the time trial, but he also claimed victory in the Tour de France by 8 seconds over the Frenchman. He had put 58 seconds into Fignon over a 24-kilometer course! It was a triumph of aerodynamics. LeMond started the time trial with a bike fitted with Scott brand aero bars. The aero bars were a relatively recent invention. They had been used since 1987 in triathlon events but had never before been used in road cycling. The UCI regulations said nothing about the use of aero bars, so LeMond decided to use them in both time trial stages of that Tour, along with a Giro aerodynamic helmet that reduced air resistance. He won both stages: the fifth and the last, achieving a comeback that seemed impossible and securing the tightest victory in the history of the Tour de France. Since then, aero bars have become an essential element for time trial specialists and have helped break records and achieve greater efficiency in time trials and stages.
6- Carbon Frames
Almost since the beginnings of cycling, one of the great technological challenges of the cycling industry has been to manufacture bicycles that are increasingly lighter, stronger, and more comfortable to ride. When aluminum replaced steel as the main material for making frames, there was a notable improvement in this regard. Aluminum is lighter and more flexible, which not only results in a lighter bicycle, but also makes it possible to create frames with more curved lines. But the great revolution in materials came with the use of carbon fiber. It is lightweight, corrosion-resistant, and offers extraordinary strength. In addition, one of the great advantages of carbon compared to metallic materials is that it can be adapted to virtually any shape and geometry. This versatility and flexibility represented a major breakthrough in the development of more aerodynamic bicycles, with geometries that combine curved and straight lines to provide greater comfort in riding and less air resistance.
Lightness, rigidity, aerodynamics, and comfort are precisely the four main qualities that cyclists value most in a bicycle. No other material combines all of these better than carbon fiber. Furthermore, depending on how the carbon fibers are arranged, frames can be made with different degrees of stiffness and flexibility in various sections of each tube. In this way, the forces exerted during pedaling can be used more efficiently, preventing the power from being dissipated and providing a faster and more comfortable ride. The use of carbon fiber in the manufacture of bicycle frames and components is a relatively recent technology. Although manufacturers were already speculating about the possibility of using it in the 1970s, it was not until the mid-1980s that it entered the scene.
Kestrel was the brand that designed the first fully carbon frame in 1986. Three years later, forks made from this material reached the market, and in 1990. Since then, the use of carbon fiber has spread widely among the leading bicycle brands, which offer monocoque frames in their high-end segments. These are made from a single piece using a unique mold.
7- STI Lever Shifters
Until 1990, to change gears by operating the front or rear derailleur, cyclists had to take one hand off the handlebars. Since the 1930s, when cable-operated derailleurs began to be used, the mechanism for selecting a larger or smaller cog or chainring was the same: moving a lever located on the frame. But in 1990, Shimano introduced a different mechanism. It consisted of a small lever integrated into the brake lever. With a simple movement of the hand, one could select a higher or lower gear superior. It was no longer necessary to take your hand off the handlebars or take your eyes off the road to change gears!
STI-type levers (an acronym for Shimano Total Integration) represented a triple breakthrough in road cycling. First, because shifting gears became more comfortable. Second, because it was no longer necessary to change your riding position to operate the derailleurs, which improved aerodynamics. And third, because riding in a group became safer. In addition, it put an end to one of the most frequent problems when shifting: having to reduce your pedaling cadence. With gear changes operated by the classic lever on the frame, it was common that to make the adjustment at a speed of superior or lower, you had to stop pedaling. Otherwise, the chain could come off. However, with STI-type levers, you no longer had to stop pedaling. Today, lever shifters (evolved from Shimano's STI system and Campagnolo's ErgoPower) are the standard on most mid- and high-end bicycles. And they practically monopolize the international peloton, with a few exceptions. Lance Armstrong, for example, used to install an STI system on the bicycles he used for mountain stages to change the cassette and a lever on the tube for chainring changes. The reason was that this way he managed to lighten his bike by 200 grams, since lever systems on the shifters have more parts than tube levers and weigh more.
8- Electronic Gear Groups
They have only been with us for a short time, but in high-level competition they have already become essential. And more and more amateur cyclists are starting to opt for them. We are referring to electronic gear groups. The first gear groups were operated by a rod system. Shortly after, the parallelogram derailleur was introduced, which used cable tension as the mechanism to change position. This mechanical system prevailed almost unchanged until just a few years ago. In the 2000s, both Shimano and Campagnolo began experimenting with electronic shifting. The operation is as follows: to shift chainrings or cogs, it is not necessary to apply any tension to the cable; instead, it carries an electrical impulse with the instruction for the derailleur.
There are two main advantages offered by electronic shifting. On the one hand, there is less wear on the shift cables, which means less maintenance and prevents the need to check housings and cabling regularly. On the other hand, the shifting is much smoother than the mechanical version and extraordinarily precise. Once it is calibrated, it is very difficult for it to go out of adjustment (unless it takes a hard hit in a fall or accident), and a slight click is enough to change gears in milliseconds. As for the disadvantages, electronic shifting depends on a battery with a limited lifespan. Although current batteries are much more durable than those in the first versions (and more compact, thus reducing the problem of where to place them), it is necessary to make sure they have an adequate charge level, so you don't end up unable to shift gears in the middle of a ride or a carrera.
On the other hand, they are also heavier and more expensive. In some cases, they are even twice as expensive as the same shifting group model in its mechanical version. In any case, it is still a relatively new technology and will surely evolve in the coming years to achieve lighter and more affordable transmission systems. In 2009, Shimano released the first generation of its Di2 electronic shifting group for the Ultegra and Dura-Ace ranges. Two years later, Campagnolo did the same with its EPS transmission, which is available for the Super Record, Record, and Chorus ranges. SRAM has been the last of the three major gear manufacturers to launch an electronic version on the market. In its case, it is also a wireless system.
9- Power meters
Aerodynamic helmets and clip-on bars for time trials were not the only technological innovations that Greg Lemond tested in the 1980s. The American cyclist, who won three Tours de France and two World Road Cycling Championships between 1983 and 1990, was the first professional cyclist to test a power meter on his bike. Power meters have become as fundamental an instrument in professional cycling as heart rate monitors are in athletics. Because they not only measure the power the cyclist applies with each pedal stroke, but they also allow you to calculate the optimal pedaling cadence depending on the type of route and the goal to achieve. In this way, effort is optimized and better results are obtained. Before power meters arrived in the international peloton, the way to manage effort was through the sensations the cyclist himself felt. This element of intuition was not entirely reliable. However, with the use of power meters in both training and competition, the cyclist accurately knows what their maximum, minimum, and average performance thresholds are. That is why they have become very popular in time trials, long-distance triathlons, and mountain stages. The power meter is not an innovation that has improved the handling of a bicycle, but it does represent a significant advance in terms of the use and optimization of pedaling cadence. Some teams, such as Team Sky, have taken the use of power meters to a new paradigm of cycling training. By combining the data provided by this instrument with the cyclist's physical parameters and the aerodynamic position on the bike, they have created pedaling models and patterns tailored to each rider.
10- John Kemp Starley's bicycle
Each of the innovations we have seen above has represented an evolution within road cycling. But they all have a common denominator: they are applied to a bicycle whose transmission mechanism and basic geometry have remained practically unchanged since the late nineteenth century. Possibly the main innovation that road cycling has experienced took place in 1885, when John Kemp Starley designed the so-called Safety Bike ('Safety bicycle', in its translation to Spanish). Until then, the most widespread bicycle model was the so-called Penny-Farthing, the high-wheel bicycle invented in 1873. This type of bicycle, whose front wheel was three times larger than the rear one, had a very high center of gravity and was very prone to tipping over. Accidents were very frequent, and given the height the cyclist had to climb, injuries were often very dramatic. Thus, in 1885 John Kemp Starley designed a more stable and safer bicycle (hence its name). Both wheels were the same size, the structure was based on a diamond-shaped frame where pressures and weights were distributed through a tubular system, and it featured a chain gear transmission mechanism. Exactly as it happens today. In addition, the center of gravity was lower and cyclists could put their feet on the ground without having to get off the bicycle, which prevented numerous accidents. The design of this 'safety machine' caused a boom in bicycle sales in the following years, and cycling races began to become increasingly popular. Moreover, since its original structure marked the beginning of the era of modern bicycles, it is probably the most significant innovation in the history of road cycling. There is no doubt that the road bicycle is a vehicle in continuous evolution. Every so often, new engineering solutions appear ready to revolutionize the way we ride or compete. The ones we have broken down in this report are those we consider to have had the greatest impact, whether in terms of structural improvement, safety, or innovation applied to the world of competition. But surely we have left out others. If you think there is one worthy of appearing in this ranking, do not hesitate to mention it in the comments. For example, Tom Boonen considers that "disc brakes are the greatest innovation I have seen on a bicycle". Perhaps in a short time, when they become common in the UCI calendar and it is proven that they provide a significant improvement, more people will end up thinking the same as the Belgian cyclist.
Road bikes and mountain bikes: two worlds, one evolution
Although many of these innovations were born in the competitive environment of road cycling, their influence has been transversal. Mountain bikes, with specific needs for resistance, traction, and absorption, have adopted and adapted many of these advances.
Today, whether you ride on asphalt or on dirt trails, you can enjoy bicycles designed with the best of technology. And what is coming in the future promises to continue revolutionizing this ever-advancing sport.