New Gravel Bike Predictions for 2026, and Airbag Bib Shorts in the Pro Peloton？ ｜ Velo Podcast

Hello everybody, thanks for coming back for another Velo podcast. My name is Mike and today I've got tech editors Alvin Holbrook and Josh Ross with me to talk about the Pro Peloton wearing bib shorts with automatically inflating airbags. The idea there is to limit injuries when riders hit the ground. Now we're also going to talk about the idea of pros having to do a bike handling course or maybe a skills test before they're allowed to race at the highest level. Which is definitely going to be a controversial subject amongst the pros. I asked Elvin and Josh as well to come on to the show with their own ideas to improve rider safety. And I have a few slightly patronizing ideas of my own that we'll get to. I think one or two of them have some real merit, but maybe not the other ones. But before we get to all that, I just want to give Josh some ---- for missing out on the Sunday Cheesecake for Breakfast Zwift ride. Josh, what the hell? Where were you? So I was actually, you know what I was doing really is I was thinking in my head. Goddamn Alvin and his winter that he has because we had a winter day that was like California winter. It was like 50 degrees, sunny, no wind. It was a little chilly. I was like, this is beautiful. So I had to get out. Yeah. So I did see your ride online, Josh, and it had an interesting ride name and an interesting description. Um, you basically like kind of to sum it up, you basically said you have a hard time getting out there and just being chill. Can you explain the name and the description for me? Yeah, so I have been, I always have a hard time when the seasons change, and so in the summer, I do these big long rides all the time, I go out, they're an adventure, they're like this thing, I feel like I'm doing something epic, and then the season changes, and I'm suddenly doing, yeah, it's just awful, I'm doing much shorter, much more intense rides, and I've been having some trouble recovering, quite honestly, I have, I just sort of feel I'm tired all the time, and I talked about it with the guys on the Cheesecake ride. We talked about it in the Zwift ride, and they're like, you're overtraining. And I'm like, but all my numbers are low. The numbers say I'm not overtraining, but I clearly am. And so I'm like, okay, I got to just be mellow, and it's a day outside. So what that was really about was this weird feeling of I went out, and I did... 52 miles or something? Mellow pace? Like, it feels weird to do that. I have the whole day free. I, like, am not crushed when I get home. Like, it feels like, what am I even bothering for? Who is this new guy? Mellow Josh. I've never seen him before. I'm not sure if I like him, to be honest. Yeah, Josh Tempo Ross. Which I guess more recently, Josh Threshold Ross. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I have these rides that I do where, so I've learned that basically For me to feel good on the bike, I need to keep turning my legs over. But like you just talked about, sometimes I have trouble turning my legs over easily. So I do these rides that I call no load modes rides. So if you went to my Strava, you would see like all these rides, like no load mode, no load mode. And it's basically, I leave the house and I'm not allowed to shift down the cassette farther than like the top two cogs, like no matter what. I'm And yeah, it just keeps me out there. starting I just, one of the things I realized was that, and it's like every year I go through this and every year I'm like surprised and don't understand what's going on. And it's exactly the same for years, but. to When I ride on Zwift, like, my quote-unquote mellow ride is, like, two hundred 200, 210 watts, like, sort of, I call that the over the bar, right? now. It's not, I don't know what the average is, whatever, but when you look down, you're doing 200, 210 watts, and when I'm outside, it's often, like, 150 watts. Now it'll be 150 watts for eight hours, nine hours or something, but I'm just not trained for three hours at 210 all the time. I just, I gotta just accept that. Yep, exactly. Alvin, you're here as well. I don't need to hear about your beautiful weekend ride in the California sunshine because I am jealous. So don't tell me about it. No, I was in Utah this past weekend. It was cold. I did go hike. That was good, but I did not bring my bike. But, you know, it's 65 today, so. God. Jeez. I'll leave it there. Yeah. I just hate it. Thank you. Yeah. Before we get into riding safety ideas, I just want to shout out that there are a couple field test, Velo field test videos right now on Velo's YouTube channel and on the Velo homepage. Um, where Alvin, you guys were in, actually, can you just give me a five minute breakdown of what you guys did? I'll do you one better. I'll do it in 30 seconds. VeloFuel test, seven gravel bikes, seven of the most popular gravel bikes that were released in the last year, mid coast Maine, gorgeous fall vibes. Its colors are changing. Excellent. Uh, challenges, episode two just went out when, by the time you hear this and we are pushing the bikes and doing some dumb, but also fun stuff on the bikes. And so entertainment, knowledge, all of that is power. I am disappointed that I was not, I'm not disappointed, I'm bummed that I didn't make this particular one. I thought it was going to be like cold and crappy there, and then I see this beautiful scenery and the fall leaves. It looks amazing. Yeah, yeah, it was excellent. We were bummed to not have you, but you know, life happens. I was there in spirit. Yes, you were. Okay. Okay, guys, Jim Cotton put together a great article that you can read right now on the Velo homepage titled Why Airbags Might Actually Solve Pro Cycling's Safety Crisis. He quotes Trek Littles Luca. Parker Salina? I did not do that right. I am so sorry, Luca. But Luca doesn't think, much like us, that gearing limits or less aero is the solution to rider safety. And instead, he brings up bib shorts with self-inflating airbags that help protect a rider from injury, which sounds pretty crazy. But Elvin, Josh? I'm sure you guys have seen similar suits being used for motorcycle racing, like in MotoGP and stuff. Have you seen those things? I actually have not. Oh, you haven't, Josh? I haven't. They're pretty crazy. They're pretty crazy. So basically, it detects impact, and then you go from this really slim suit to pretty much immediately Michelin Man. Yeah, it actually, just to get a bit nerdy here, Alvin, I'm going to correct you on one thing. It doesn't actually inflate on impact. It inflates before impact. It's triggered by data from multiple accelerometers and gyroscopes. And then GPS is used. And that's how it knows how fast you're going. So the airbag doesn't go off like, you know, let's say you're walking to your motorbike and you trip on. Something or other. So it won't go off if you're going like 0.2 miles an hour or whatever. Um, they have a minimum threshold speed. So if you were to go online and, and type in like airbag suit goes off or whatever, you'll see these guys on their bikes and like a classic, uh, MotoGP crasher or super bike or whatever crash is a scary one as a high side over the top. And you'll see these guys get the front end wiggle, it catches them, it throws them out the front door, and the suit goes, poof, almost before they've left the motorbike. And it's inflated by CO2. So how does that happen? Is it because they're attached to the moto or something like that? And then something gets pulled? No, it's all sensors. That's what he said. It's all sensors. It's measuring, yeah, accelerometer stuff. And again, the GPS tells it how, I think that's a super important part of it. The GPS tells it how fast the guys are going. So again, like if they're trying to do a track stand and they fall over, it probably isn't going to go off. Do you have an idea how heavy? Those suits are heavy, by chance? How much heavier? Way more heavier. We'll get into that being an issue in a bit with the cycling stuff. They're definitely heavier. Thank But because they're mandated, like it's part of the rules, it doesn't matter. Like if they're a pound heavier, all the suits are a pound heavier, right? It doesn't matter when you're on a Hayabusa. Yes, it would matter. Yeah. Okay. All right. you. What, what I'm saying is like in a competition sense, it's not like one guy is having to carry more weight around than another guy. And again, we'll get to the challenges of this and how realistic or unrealistic it might be for cycling. Um, but if, if every suit or every airbag thing added 400 grams, You know, it's from a, just a pure weight perspective or equality perspective. It's like, who cares, you know, cause it's all the same, but there is the, I mean, we could talk about this later, but like weight matters more in road racing than it does out there. Cause it can be easily overcome. And so the differences in weight between one rider and another, aren't as big of a deal. Whereas you have weight differences that can matter quite a bit. Yeah. But if everybody has the same 400 gram weight penalty. It's like giving them a ballast. If everybody has a ballast, it doesn't matter. Yeah, but it's rider strength. Like I, the reason I bring this up is because I do, and I know that this is taking us like out of, like not where we're supposed to go, but I mentioned this as someone who's pretty lightweight. My advantage on the bike is that I'm pretty lightweight. And so 400 grams on Levy is not going to be as big of a deal as it's going to be 400 grams on me. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Specifically in the muscle, in my muscles and that type of thing. Yeah. Anyways. I see what you're saying for sure. We're going to get into the challenges there in a sec. I did also discover, I wasn't aware of this, but... You know, if a consumer can go online or to a motorbike store and Dainese and I think maybe Alpinestars and other companies, they sell consumer versions of inflating safety gear for road use. So you could get a vest. It looks like a normal vest. They start at about $800 American and the full suits are about $2,500 American. I'm not American. But this is something that's not just for racers. Like people who ride motorbikes just like around town or go on trips or whatever, you can get these things, which is pretty neat. And then immediately I thought that it would have been real handy for me to have at that field test in Maine. Or sorry, in Marin. Yeah, go for it. That would have been helpful. So what I wanted to bring to this conversation was there was, and I just looked it up while we were talking, it sounds like it's coming back, an airbag helmet for cyclists. And it's this exact thing. It's called Hovding. I probably butchered that. It's Swedish. Uh, And the original company, I'm just reading from the site now, but the original company went bankrupt, which I did know about. And it was because Sweden, where they're based, had temporarily paused the sale of it to study if it worked. The company sued and proved that it did work, but they couldn't recover from that. It looks like the... They've now changed hands. There's a new version coming next year, they say. Although, you know, I don't know if it'll actually come next year. Those things tend to drag. And also, we've never gotten it in the U.S., and I've even tried in years past to be like, I'm a reviewer, let me just try this. But no, I could not get it. But it's the same thing. It uses sensors, and before you hit the ground, it inflates. And the whole idea is you don't have to wear a helmet when you're cruising around the city in Sweden or wherever. And, uh... Yeah, it seems like a cool thing. There is, I'm not familiar with that one, but this is more recreational commuter type thing. There was a thing that basically went around your neck and it wasn't a helmet. Yeah, that's this. Okay, so it wasn't built into the helmet. No, no, no, it's just, it goes around your neck and then when it inflates, it covers your whole head. Yeah. Wait, wait, it's like a... It goes around your neck and it blows, pops, it goes, and it covers your head. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you don't have to wear a helmet. That's because like in, in places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam and wherever cycling is huge, like when you have a massive cyclist, you don't like, they don't really wear helmets and they don't really need to like speeds aren't high enough. Like in that type of thing. And I don't know. For most people, wearing a helmet looks whack. I don't blame them. But I think I would rather just wear a helmet at that point. Yeah, it sounds like something that's definitely geared, obviously, more towards commuters. If you're cruising down the bike path on your Gazella at five kilometers an hour, you might not want to wear a helmet. you. This is definitely aimed at commuters. Thank Also, I don't mind wearing a helmet, obviously. We all wear helmets. But if you told me that there's this other... Oh my gosh. Well, I know you take yours off because you're a weirdo. Yeah. Yeah. But... If there was a thing that actually worked like this, you. then that would be cool. Yeah. Okay. Pretty neat. So in Jim's article, he has photos of these crazy bib shorts, and they're from a Belgian company called SideSign. And so if you just picture a pair of bib shorts and the airbags, the airbag sections, they're in the straps. So they're like long, skinny airbags that go up the straps. And then there's a ring around the hips, kind of like where your hip bones are, that wraps all the way around so it protects your hips and your tailbone. And then there's small sections on the chest and on the back that also inflate. And it looks like maybe the one on the back interacts with a helmet, maybe to protect the neck. It looks really neat. Right. And... It probably does help in some way or another, but I could also see about like 10 concerns that I personally would have. And I'm just a normal person, let alone like these pros. So guys, they're obviously heavier and hotter. How enthusiastic do you think someone like Pogi would be to pull on a set of bib shorts with airbags in it? Not, and that's why you'd have to force everyone to do it. Yeah. Well, I don't, I don't, okay. Unless, unless there's like a, hey, this is far safer. Like, I do think that regardless of whether or not, even if everyone is mandated to use it, there's going to be advantages for riders that can work with the airbag or the extra weight of the airbag versus not. This feels like the, those old commercials or those old interviews where there's the woman in her, like. pickup truck in the 80s going like, the government's trying to tell me I can't have a beer or two on the drive home. I have to wear my seatbelt? Yeah, I have to wear my seatbelt and drink my beer. And like, come on, these guys, their whole life revolves around them staying healthy. And I understand that they would be against it because people are against change like this, but like, it would be better for them. I'm going to stop you there though, Josh. Their whole life doesn't revolve around being healthy. I would probably argue the opposite of that. Their whole life revolves around going as fast as possible and like power to weight. And we all know bike racers, bike racers hate change almost as much as I hate change. You know, yes, their job is this is like the this is like the idea of where you have sports directors who like are willing to just churn through young talent versus sports directors who are not like, yeah, you could view a professional cyclist in that regard that their job is to go as fast as possible, no matter what. And if they get hurt, it doesn't like move on to the next. But wouldn't everybody be better if they could just stay healthy and go fast? Okay, so I'm a tech editor, right? So all of this should be taken with a grain of salt from my perspective. But I think the answer, I mean, okay, let me back up. So there was, I wrote a similar story about this, about rider safety. And there was this study from, is it SAFER? Like the group from UCI that came out last year? SAFER. Yeah. Safe R or something like that. And there was something like, it was, I have the numbers right here. So they were. Cataloging all of the race incidences that happened in 2024, 27% of them were just, they said were due to rider problems, unprovoked rider errors or something like that. I think this is, I mean, not to say that this safety gear isn't important, but I do think that to a degree it is the UCI passing the buck on things that they've already, like their mistakes of like poor race design and that type of thing and having places that aren't like carefully aligned and not figuring out how to make sure that the fans don't like hop in out of nowhere and so on and so forth. I have to disagree with you because... I think no matter what happens, like no matter how safe the courses may or definitely may not be, or how fast the riders are going, there's always going to be crashes. It's like, you know, 150 people that are freaking pumped up to crush each other and wheels are overlapping. There's always going to be crashes. So from my perspective, like I am anything but pro safety in general. But... But, yeah, but the way that I look at this is, You can never solve the crashing problem. You are never going to keep these people from hitting the ground. So you have to look at it as in, well, if they hit the ground, how can we keep them safe or keep them from breaking their hips or, you know, things like that, which is sort of what this thing, this suit might help. Uh, hypothetically, I, I don't think this is going to be reality. I don't think there's a world where any of anybody in the pro Peloton is wearing inflating bib shorts. Well, here's the thing. We would need the UCI to actually be a credible leader in this. This is where they could, they could like, yeah. Right. You want to talk about like, this is what the UCI could do. They could say, they could go. Okay. We're going to stop playing games with gearing and BS that does not matter. We are mandating this. We're going to give one year or two years to phase in this airbag thing. Let's Let the market figure it out, and they could make this happen, and it would be better for everyone. This is going to take more than one or two years. do I think it would take a while, but it's also the role of a governing body. this To look out for the best interests of those participants. And that's why the governing body is not made up of athletes thing. or the people doing the sport. When you look at a lot of other sports, because those athletes don't, sometimes don't know what's best for them or might not care about what's best for them. And I, I don't think the UCI is just going to say, Hey boys and girls, you're wearing this now. Like that's not going to happen, but also if it did happen. There's a part of me that would be amazing. Yeah. I mean, it would be cool. I do think that like this is, I don't, I can't remember what the idiom is, but there are easier things to be done here that don't require a mass change from an entire industry to, to build these pro kits. Like you just change where the race starts and finishes. You take out the number of cars in. the convoy behind the riders like i do think that that seems like that could be an issue too uh yeah i i mean there's there are other things i'm not thinking about i'm sure like And then also importantly, that number that I brought up, the 27%, figure out exactly what happened. Don't just say it's rider error, because I have a hard time believing that's fully rider error. I mean, I'm going to just point back to the ineptitude of the UCI in this, because they could focus on both things. They could be like, hey, we're not going to have a downhill sprint finish, and we're also going to mandate that we start phasing in. These this new technology and they could really be leaders like this is simple stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Like simply like look at the barriers like those are dangerous, you know, like there's other there's low hanging fruit for sure, but there's no reason why they couldn't do both. I think another hurdle would be, I mean, obviously clothing sponsors. Like, they have to redesign all their stuff, but also, maybe it's sort of like MIPS, where... I think clothing sponsors would love this, if it was mandated. How come? Explain. Same as you can buy, so they wouldn't love it at first, and they might even publicly, like, or they probably wouldn't do it publicly, but they might grumble about it. But in the same way that you can buy those Alpinestars crash bags for motorcycles, I bet consumers, I bet this would be a consumer boon. That's actually a really good point. Like it's a new product and it's. It's a new product and it's such an easy sale. If you were like, hey, salesperson, I want you to sell this thing that like makes people safer and we're going to make it look cool too, right? Because that has to be part of the thing. We're going to integrate it. We're going to make it like, we're going to make this work and the pros are wearing it. This would, this would be good for the whole industry. Yeah. Yeah. I could see what you're saying there. So, Alvin, you touched on it a bit that maybe there are some easier things. Yeah, absolutely. So I asked you guys to come to the podcast with a couple ideas on how to improve rider safety. And I came with three. I'm going to start with one that I don't think people will like, but I think actually makes a lot of sense. I'm just going to say it. Everybody get mad at me. What if everybody had brake lights? A small red LED under their seat, you know, a little wire, whatever, or maybe it's wireless linked to the hoods or the brake levers. Um, And everyone would have to use one. So it's all even. So what I'm thinking of is think of these really nasty pileups. Everybody's an inch apart. They're cruising down the road at somebody in the middle, you know, slows down, sits up a little bit or slows down a little bit and boom, 20 people are on the ground. If there was just some visual warning, what do you think? We're talking pro-Peloton stuff, right? Yeah. Not consumer stuff. No, pro-Peloton. Pro-Peloton. Brake lights for the pros. Tell me, guys, what do you think? Is this a problem? I'm not sure. This feels a little like when we went to disc brakes and the pros were like, oh, everyone's going to die and their bikes are going to explode because we can stop faster. Thank you, sir. I don't know. I just think some heads up for the people behind... So there's going to be maybe less wheel overlap and all the other stuff. I don't know. I know that brake lights, nobody wants brake lights on their bike. It's like, you're going to put blinkers on these guys' bikes too? But do you think that would help limit the crashing in a big Peloton rolling down the road? I think consumers, by and large, have been fairly open to brake lights. There are a number of rear lights that have those sorts of features, and people seem to like it. I just don't know if, in either case, it actually improves safety. Yeah, I do wonder how quickly people... There just won't be enough time for people to react. But I am interested. It sounds like you don't like it. I have an idea. Let's just make all disc brakes squeak really loud. Yes. There you go. Yes. That is not terrible. Alvin, you hit me with one of your ideas. I mean, I did. The ideas I have weren't gear, unfortunately. It was get rid of downhill finishes. Yeah. Get rid of downhill finishes in like instills some sort of standard for how like road furniture is taken care of like bump up safety or security rather to to make sure people aren't getting on the course like at random times and that type of thing. Why so road furniture I forget the guy's name but at last year's tour It was one of the worst crashes I had ever seen. That guy went right into the traffic island and he went over the top of like the six foot sign. If you're like the tour is a big deal. Why can't they just have a guy, the roads are closed. Why can't they just have somebody ahead of the Peloton just remove these damn signs? Yeah, well, I personally don't know, but I'm very curious what the review process is. With the UCI prior to a race, how deep are they getting into it? Are they riding key parts of the course? Are they with a pro or someone who's going to be racing that? I feel like both of those could be good ideas if that's something that they're not already doing. Because having a former pro there would be good, but having someone who's currently a pro will be very attuned. to knowing okay i see this curb right here this is going to be a problem or i can see that the road narrows here this is going to be a problem because this is where this move is going to happen later um yeah yeah okay what about What about another terrible idea? ABS does not work off-road, of course. You need to be able to lock your rear wheel up on a mountain bike to turn sometimes. It's a tool to do things or to just do a big fat skid because that's always fun. But on a road bike where you're on a super high grip surface, Not being able to really, really lock up your rear wheel, because a lot of times, as soon as that one wheel locks, the person is just a passenger, you know, especially if you don't have a mountain bike background or, I mean, not to say that all mountain bikers are good handlers, but just something to keep that rear wheel from locking, because as soon as a rear wheel locks on a road bike, it could be disaster. What do you guys think of that? I have terrible bike handling skills, and I still manage to save it when I lock wheels sometimes. I've never gone down, and I've locked a wheel a number of times. And also, don't we want... It was Tom Dumoulin, right, that did that? He skids down the entire mountain. I don't want to take that away from people. Wow. Okay. All seriousness, though, I'm into this one. It would add weight, though. All it is is a little hydraulic coupler, like a little hydraulic thing at some point along the brake line. They could be like a very small unit. Tell me more about that, because my understanding of ABS is it's all computer controlled. It has to go on and off when it... I can't tell you more because I'm talking out my ass. I don't want anything. Well, so this is a long, this will get people riled up. I have had a long standing, like I feel like, why are we not moving to brake by wire in bikes? And if you move to brake by wire, you can have ABS. Interesting. We have brake by wire in cars. Why don't we have brake by wire in bikes? I could come up with a reason why. Yeah, I could come up with a few reasons why. A bike is like, I know we have wireless shifting now and things are getting weird and stuff, but a bike is like this mechanical horse that people can work on and they can understand much more so than a car. And I feel like people don't want to, might not want to move away from that. And also people are never going to trust wireless braking. Okay, come in here close, everybody. All right, buddy. People trust wireless braking in cars. They don't. They don't even know they have it. They don't even know that they have it. Where's the power coming from? If it's an electric car, it's a massive battery pack that's going to take them 300 miles. I will give one point of contention. I'm forgetting about the battery every time I'm riding, frankly. That would be awesome if your brakes would just fail. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that would suck. Well, there is one point of contention I will throw out there for people that are listening and yelling at their screens or whatever, is that cars do have a backup when they have a hydraulic failsafe when it's brake by wire. But still, I feel like we could move to brake by wire. And that's the only way you get ABS, though. You need electronics to create ABS. Yeah, I mean, you can put in electronics into the system. Hydraulic system. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, you can do that. I've also, I've seen an ABS unit at a trade show for mountain bikes. And it's obviously not true ABS, like it's not... reacting over and over again like every you know tenth of a second or however fast ABS is I think it's more straight up limiting the power that you can apply I have no idea how it works but that is the impression that I got and I remember I would see it every single year at Interbike at the outdoor demo and I don't think it's ever been a product that you could buy though so because I'm I'm sure they're waiting for like a Shimano or a SRAM. To buy the technology and why would they do that? What do you think of, so Jim in that story also mentioned like the idea of having like a super license type of thing. I love it. I love it. So that comes from Jael Almeida. He was on the Sigma Sport podcast with Matt Stevens. And I'm just going to read a quote here from Almeida. He said, maybe some riders need to do a course to do some cornering, some descents, so they know what they are doing. Because if you go faster, you need to have more skills as well. I outwardly want to hate the idea of a skills test for the pros, because in my mind, all of these guys, you know, these guys are living on their bike. They have to be amazing bike handlers already, right? Nope. Some, yeah, some are, some aren't. I'm Yeah. So I kind of like it. starting What do you guys think? Yeah, I don't have, I mean, for me, yeah, for me as a viewer, like, yeah, why not? I think everyone handles great, though. I don't know. to I would prefer to have input here from someone who, speak. you know, is in there. Because you hear often enough, like, from the pro peloton, like, yeah, this person doesn't know how to ride, or there's these things about, like, younger riders being a lot more selfish and not following, like... The, the unspoken rules or what have you. Um, I wonder if those unspoken rules just need to become spoken rules, like decisive rules from the UCI, but I, I don't know. Like we, I think we all know people who are incredibly strong, but might not know about something called an apex. Or line choice, you know, and like when you know there's what an apex is, all of a sudden that corner becomes much easier to carry more speed through. Your corner is wider, your arc is gentler and all of those things. Thanks. I like the idea. And also, like, if you look at other sports where things are even way more serious, you know, like motorsports, all motorsports have some sort of, like, skills ladder or, like, you have to have a certain number of points before you can do this. Like, some of the best drivers in the world from other series are not allowed anywhere near an F1 car, despite them being incredible because they don't have the super license points. And it doesn't matter if you're... Who you are and how many things you've won, you're not allowed to drive that until you can prove yourself in this formula, this formula, this formula. Um Logan Sargent. Yeah, I mean, lots of them. Yeah, I mean, he got his points eventually. But look Look at Colton Herta. Colton Herta is a very successful IndyCar racer. We're going way off on a tangent here. for Very successful, successful IndyCar racer. having But it's... At one point, he couldn't just jump into an F1 car because he doesn't have the super license points. He does have the skill. It's probably harder to drive an Indy car and or scarier to drive an Indy car in an oval than an F1 car around whatever. Whatever. And it's got nothing to do with respect. He literally didn't have the points to do it. I am pro skills test. But how would you implement it? Again, is this not the UCI? So it never happens. Yeah. Yeah. I, the way that I see it happening, it would look, maybe it would just be like a course, you know, line choice, like what is an apex? What is a vanishing point? Like braking technique, how to use the front more, maybe even, you know, they have to get going in a straight line real fast and lock the rear wheel and keep control. I don't, I don't know what the test looks like. But I 100% know that nobody in the pro peloton would want to do it. Of course not, but there's no down... The reason I said I didn't have an opinion on this, or I didn't have a lot to say, is because what is the downside here? There's literally no downside. You can't even make an argument for weight or these other things where we're talking about another thing, like where these technology things. It's literally like, just do this thing. Yeah. I mean, it could just be like a formalization of, hey, these unspoken rules are now spoken of. If you screw this up, you're getting a yellow card. It could be that. I mean, because you could do like a, you have to have like one thing in the license, you have to have ridden a certain number of races or that type of thing and what have you. And that would weed out some of the super high-end rowers out there, basically. But yeah, I don't know. I don't have a strong opinion on that. My main opinion is road furniture. Figure that out. Downhill sprint finishes. Figure that out. And that'll make things safer. Yeah, exactly. I also do want to jump back in our discussion just ever so slightly because you had mentioned something about this Tyvek material on the shorts. And I want to bring that up only because Alvin and I both have real-life products that have something similar. I have some Assos Bib Tights that have a little pocket on the outside of the hip. Oh, yeah. And they fit this sort of gel-ish... Uh, waffle material that you slide in there so that, and they're bib tights. So they expect if you're falling, if you're riding in the ice and you were to fall, then you have something to cushion your hips and Alvin, you have some Q365, tech. Yeah. I've had this for a little while. I don't know how easily you can see this on camera, but you can kind of see the material right there. Like it's pretty. Uh, it feels like crepe paper almost as opposed to a standard kit and there's a lot more texture to it and you can, you can hear the textural difference there. I always thought it would be, um, more aero cause it would create a boundary layer. I mean, they say that, they say that too. Here's, here's the big thing with this kit. This is an expensive kit from Q365. I've crashed three times on gravel on this. This is, and, and it's good as, I mean, it's. I don't see any abrasion anywhere on the kit. And so that is the benefit. Did the shorts keep you from getting your hips torn up? Yeah. Did it actually work? Yeah. Yeah. No, there's no holes in the bibs at all. Oh. Yeah. And I had like some bruises and stuff, but it didn't. Like, it didn't, there wasn't any blood those times. I would rather break a bone, I think, than have, like, a giant oozing raspberry, to be honest. And, like, getting stuck to the sheets. Like, that's the worst part of cycling. Yeah. I haven't broken a bone myself. Knock on wood. That's my head right there. So my, with the Osis ones, my buddy that I used to ride with during the winter, he chose to not bring, because they fit in a little pocket, you can take them in and out, chose to not bring them on one ride and that he did fall that ride. We were riding in the snow and he would have. He got like a hematoma, right? A thing that swelled up and filled with blood and he had to have that drained. And he always, like for years, he would talk to me and be like, if I had just been wearing those damn things, I would not, this would not have happened. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So I just wanted to, I wanted to throw that back to that. If as consumers listening, if this is important to you, there are products you can find. I don't know if Asos still has that, but Cubed I think does. And that jersey is fantastic, by the way. It's just a really good jersey otherwise. UCI, if you're listening, I think we solved the rider safety issue. Yeah, call me. Call me, beat me. You want to reach me? Call her. Yeah. Let's move on. Alvin, you had your crystal ball out and you looked into it and saw some 2026 gravel bike things that you are reporting back on. So. What does the future hold? Tell me. Yeah. So I started the story with, I mean, this is basically nine gravel bikes that we predict will get updated in 2026. Um, some of them, I mean, I think are really low hanging fruit. Like the Ibis Haka MX came out in 2019. Like they, they got to update it. Yeah. Yeah. They got to update it. Uh, and then there's other things where you're just like reading the room and you're like, okay, well, this means this is, Like, oh, Specialized is rumored to... be talking with a high-end gravel pro. It seems like they might be interested in the company. His name is Keegan Swenson. I wasn't going to say that because I don't want to share unsubstantiated claims. But I will say that we have been hearing about this for months and decided not to report on it because we couldn't get any sources on it. Anyways. Here's the thing for listeners is that in the bike industry, I'm sure this is not a surprise to people, but you just sort of start hearing things. They just bubble up and you're like, well, who'd you hear that from? Can I get a source? And you can't, and you can't say anything about it, but they start to bubble to a point where you go, ah, this is probably going to happen. As soon as you can't get a source, that's how you know it's real. Yeah. Yeah. So, so one of the bikes that. I predicted is going to get an update this year is the Specialized Crux. And part of that is because you kind of can just fall like you can kind of just follow Specialized updates. They are remarkably consistent about their product life cycles. And the Crux was last updated in 2021. It makes sense that there's going to be one coming out sometime in 2026 this year. Plus the Diverge was updated. They tried to call it a race, the gravel race bike, and they don't have a gravel race bike. Like they talk. Yes, you can race on any, you can race on anything, but the Crux is the gravel race bike and it needs an update. Yeah, when given a choice, basically all of those specialized pro racers are on the Crux, except for Sarah Stern. Yeah, so that's one. I predicted, I mean, there's a question there of like, which direction does the Crux go? Like, does it be like stick to what it is, which is kind of like a gravel version of the Athos or does it evolve into something else? And I predict it's going to be more of like a tarmac. Like it's going to have more aero stuff going on. It's going to probably be a similar weight. But it's going to have more aero stuff going on, bigger tire clearance, and it's going to be intriguing enough to draw in the top pros in the Lifetime Grand Prix, whoever they might be. I want to ask you about some very specific things. What does the death of terrible cable routing mean? What exactly are you picking on there? Oh, I am thinking of... Bikes that route their brake hoses inside of the handlebars, inside of the stem and into the headset. Internal cable routing for the most part sucks if you're a home mechanic and you don't consider yourself handy. However, there are options that are better out there. There are options That will route the brake hoses outside of the handlebars, which means that you can switch out the handlebars without needing to cut brake hoses and buy like an expensive internal routing tool. There are also stems out there that allow for the brake hoses to be routed under the stem, but still keep them kind of clean looking. You know, like there are options out there. Specialized has one, for example. They do a pretty good job of that. And it still routes through the headset. That is something that is never going to go away, unfortunately, especially because not enough people are buying bikes that don't do that, frankly. Like if, yeah, so. I just built up that Allied, which has that Allied ST something or other stem on it. And it does exactly that. The lines... They're not underneath the stem. They're at the top of the stem and like a plate covers them over the top. And it's currently not set up to use that right now. But I did kind of just run them through like a dry fit or whatever. And it's super easy. And yeah, I don't know. It makes a lot of sense. Like, so what you're saying basically is we're going to keep internal hidden routing, but it's going to get much easier to live with. That's the, that is what I want. I would like more bikes to have. Like, brake hoses routed under the stem, such that you can go to a bike shop, replace the stem, grab whatever. Ideally, it's something like you see on, like, the Cervelo Soloist, where it's just their standard, like, whatever FSA stem off the shelf. And then the brake hoses, it's not the prettiest looking thing, but it still tucks it away. You still get some sort of advantage as far as looks, but you can still pack the bike. You can still switch out the handlebars or the stem relatively inexpensively. Okay. Next up, Alvin, geometry and bike fits that work across the size range. Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this. Gravel bikes, I think the big issue that not enough people are talking about with particularly small gravel bikes and the push for wider tires is toe overlap. Toe overlap's a big, like it's an issue that I have on. Most of the gravel bikes that I'm riding, even that Stigmata toe overlap. Have you gone down? Have you crashed? No. Well, I will say that I personally haven't gone down. I don't have a problem with it, but there are plenty of, there are enough people who do and like, will not think about specific bikes because of it. I don't necessarily agree with them. You know, I think you should. Yeah. I don't necessarily agree with that. It's not a problem for me, but it is a problem for enough people that I need to mention it. To solve toe overlap, it's like a big geometry change. So it's not just like, okay, we did this to fix toe overlap. It's okay, we did this to fix toe overlap, but now the bike handles completely differently. Yeah, exactly. There is a bike that I can't talk about yet that does... I think solve it or come closer to solving it. It's on the road bike side of things. And it does some pretty novel geometry stuff that I'm really excited about, even though this bike isn't supposed to be about geometry and I'll leave it there. Okay. Yeah. We'll learn about it in about two weeks. All of my gravel bikes, almost without question, I ride a 54 or a medium, have toe overlap, and I just consider it part of life. It's a nice one. It's not there. It's mostly not a problem for me, except occasionally on switchbacks. That's tough. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, for me, like... You kind of just learn to live with it. There's some folks that aren't like I was on the bike nonstop. I also grew up riding fixies. Like you get to overlap and you're done. Like, and I, all of my bikes had toe overlap. And so like, I was proud of how much toe overlap my bikes had. Like, I remember I had a nineties Cannondale track that like. It was almost the crank arm itself overlapped with the front wheel, which is nuts. And so that's not a problem for me. But the other thing with the geometry thing, I do think like crank lengths, for example, and Josh, like you're something you're really into is handlebars, proportional handlebar widths. That's really important for people too. And I think, yeah. I think I've actually gone to. I think I've actually gone to 38 as my gravel bar setup now, too. I'm done with even a 40. I don't think the average gravel cyclist, to be fair, will be riding that. But I'm done with 42s on the smallest bike possible. I think, speaking of toe overlap, just before we move on from that, if the bike's geometry evolved closer to where I think it should be, I think a lot of toe overlap would be less of an issue. Like, if front ends got longer like they're supposed to be, and if bikes got a little bit slacker like they should be, then the toe overlap will be less of a thing, you know? Yeah, yeah. It naturally disappears like that. Yeah, I will eventually pen a story on this, but I think the answer will be kind of the direction that you're going. is steeper seat tube angle, get someone farther up on the bike, which means extending the front center of that bike. And then can we pivot that front wheel in such a way where you maintain like the trail figures that you want, but you just put more of that front center length or that reach into the frame as opposed to the bars. Yeah. Elvin, is toe overlap a concern enough for you that you would buy a bike with a smaller wheel size? It isn't for me. I actually prefer a bike. I want a 700C wheel, but I have met and talked to enough people where that is a point of concern. And more specifically, they end up buying a bike with 650B wheels and they're like, oh yeah, this is great. For the first time, I have a bike that feels like it handles well. And so that. The issue, the reason why I don't, I don't want 650b wheels on my bike is because it limits the number of tires that you have over, there are other things too, but that's, that's the big thing for me. But for a lot of people, the average cyclist. Are they switching out their tires that often? No. Are they switching out their wheels that often? No. And so having something that works out of the box that's proportional is great. And on the mountain bike side, like gravel, like 32-inch wheels for super big riders, I think that could be really interesting too, because that is proportional when you're It's coming. When you're tall enough. Yeah, it's coming. Is it coming to gravel, 750B? Maybe. Whether you like it or not, it's coming. I don't know about that one, but yeah. Okay, next stop. 13 speed, but wider range cassettes. Oh yeah. Yeah. Easy peasy. People need lower climbing gears. That's it. But I don't know. I don't, even if you don't have a lot of climbs around you, you're going to benefit from the range. You're going to benefit from the ability to spin as opposed to having to grunt up stuff. I'm Yeah. That's about it. going I would love the 13 speed stuff, but it's a non-factor for me because a 10-46 cassette is not going to work for me, period, where I live. to Yeah. Well, we should mention, caveat, stop what size chainring do you ride for where you live, Levy? Small. I'm very weak, though, so I need a small one. there. Yeah, it's like a 40, though, right? It's like a 40, maybe it's a 42. No, are you kidding me? It's a 36. There you go. See, where you're riding is not normal. But I think the average person that's getting like a 40 tooth chainring or a 42 tooth chainring on their gravel bike, their lowest low gear is like a 42, 44, or maybe it's a 42, 46. I think they can stand to go a little bit lower still. Dude, I can go like 10 teeth lower. SRAM thinks that 40 is the sweet spot, it seems. Because that's what the Force and Rival launched, we talked about that a little bit. I also want to just throw it out there that I am working on getting the review bike in for the Campy gravel. And that is 40, 48, 10 to 48 on that. Yeah that's better. I would love to have the wider range cassette and then based on my terrain choose the chain ring so I can optimize for chain line. So if I'm riding in a place that's mostly flat I would love to have like a 46 maybe 48 on the front and then just optimize to make that chain as straight as possible and then you know if I'm where I live go down to like a 42. You know, one of the issues with that is when I travel with my bike, sometimes I'll put on a bigger chain ring. Like if I come down to ride with you guys, I'll put on a bigger chain ring because it's, I mean, you guys have some steep climbs too, but it's slightly less steep. But then with the T-type chain and transmission. Then you have to start adding links to the chain, which isn't, you can't just add links to the T-type chain. That's a good point. You need a different chain. So it's not like it's super easy for me. Oh, I'll go from a 36 to a 40. Well, I need a longer, a whole other chain for that, which is not an inexpensive thing, you know? Well, what if we just put in like a second or maybe a third chain ring up front? What if we did that? Yeah, that's crazy. And we just shifted between the three chain rings. Some sort of mechanism up front that moves the chain between the chain rings? No, you guys are missing the point. SRAM should do that. That sounds like a great idea. They should perfect that. What you guys need is N plus 1. You just need another bike. Right, just for gearing. Thank you, Aaron. Two gearing. You got your flat bike. You got your climbing bike. Yeah. Okay. Guys, let's wrap it up here. For everybody that's listening, we hope you enjoyed the podcast. Let us know what you think of these rider safety things. Do you guys think that inflatable bib shorts make sense? Do you think that my idea of ABS and brake lights, do you think those are dumb ideas? Because they kind of are dumb ideas, but let me know in the comments. And as Alvin mentioned, Right now, if you went to the Velo homepage or the Velo YouTube channel, you could check out their field test videos where they tested a bunch of the latest new bikes, did a bunch of challenges, picked a winner. Check it out. The editing is amazing. Great soundtrack. And everybody, we will see you next episode. Best episode yet. This is the best episode yet. The fireworks really do it for me.