Tour de Droopy 3.99999 - ∞

I think this is the last part of the "I told you so" gloating victory tour about drooper post champion Mohorič and his major (to me... prolly him too) victory at Milan-San...

This gave me a headache:

That twisty collar bit is what the team at Bahrain Victorious came up with to operate the Fox Transfer SL drooper post.  I don't get it.  It's like the drooper post was some kinda alien technology they found in some spacecraft wreckage, and they had to invent some human mechanization to make it work.  Are there ten or more better options at this point, including one from Fox's sister company Easton (who has their own version of the Transfer SL called the EA 90AX)?

I know he's gonna want something he can operate from the drops and not one of those stupid levers that clamps on the flats, but the garvel bike egghead engineers have been working on the drop bar specific lever for years, so mebbe give that a shake before digging into your Erector Set tryna reinvent the wheel?

Then again, he's now won the Milan-San Remo and I haven't so...

And my final takeaway... I hope.

I know Mohorič looked at this ONE race with the climb up the Poggio near the end, followed by a harrowing descent, and then a short run to the finish that might make it hard for a chase group to close the gap and decided this was HIS time to use a drooper post FTW.

But here's the thing.

The "others" have to be looking now.

If you can gain time without the expenditure of any extra energy AND keep the bike at or close to the UCI weight minimum, what's the point of not having a drooper (other than aerodynamics)?  Obviously, there's a lot of road bikes out there that don't use round seat pipes, so they've got a problem.  If one rider decides to take advantage of "free speed" and has the potential to drop their rivals, they're going to have to use energy to close the gap back up when the mountain flattens out OR take risks that a rider with a lower center of gravity isn't taking.  Think about a rider like Remco Evenepoel, who is a super strong young rider, but he's not known for his descending skills... yet.  What if there were a way to give him more confidence and that "free speed" I mentioned?  So, mebbe now you got the top guns drooping, but what about their domestiques?   Can't be losing them on the descents if you're going to need them later... so do they get droopy too?

On a 1.4 mile segment of my commute home from trivia night, I lose about 105 feet of elevation at a pretty constant rate.  If I ride my bar bike/grocery getter with it's 34 X 18 gearing, I'll be spun out quite a bit, so I droop.  A lot.  Because it's faster.  Because it's relaxing.  Because sitting up in the wind on a single speed mountain bike feels 100% stupid to me after all these years of drooping.  Because... burrito.

In Matej Mohorič's own words, "I've destroyed cycling, now everyone will use a dropper post."

Keep in mind, the UCI declared them legal in 2014 (as long as they conform to setback rules in the up and down position), so let's see who destroys cycling now.

That's all I got to say about that (for now).

This weekend, the blerhg goes back to regularly scheduled programming with the first event of my "season," The Triple Dip V20.22.  Sort of a race.  Sorta not.  Absolutely the last thing I should be doing before leaving for the Moab Rocks Stage Race the next weekend, but whatever.