Talk:Road bicycle

"Types of road bicycles"

The list "Types of road bicycles" includes Mountain bicycles - clearly an error. perhaps this list would be better at bicycle, in which case mountain bikes could stay in the list. --Singkong2005 15:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Meosphere list

Added an external link to list of manufacturers of road bikes. As a road biker, this is helpful information and the type of information that you can find external links to all over wikipedia. The list was the result of much research as well as the input of many road bikers adding information. Please consider reversing your deletion. Respectfully, Eliasone

Well, the first problem is that yesterday's edit was anonymous. It's hard to believe a user who hasn't got an account is sincere. True, the majority of anonymous edits are useful or at least not bad, but most linkspam and other bad edits are anonymous. Then there's the site, this Meosphere, which has flashy ads and looks more like a kid site for goofing around than a serious source of information. Anyway, now that you've got an account and an argument, I'll revert my reversion for a few days. What you should do, however, now that you're trying to be taken seriously, is put a serious list of roadbike makers right into Wikipedia. It can be a section of Road bicycle, a subcat of Category:Cycle manufacturers, a section of List of bicycle manufacturers, or elsewhere in the encyclopedia.

Making an encyclopedia is a lot of work. It isn't just knowing something and putting it in. You have to organize the knowledge, fix the bad parts, connect the good parts together, watch out for people who don't understand what they are doing and otherwise tend it like a garden. Jim.henderson 03:41, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Article Name

This article's opening paragraph seems to contradict itself. It says a road bicycle is any bicycle that's used on the road, then goes on to say most have "drop handlebars and multiple gears", I think if we take a global view it's very clear that most bikes used on the road do not have drop bars. Even at a more local level I believe that few places have predominantly bikes with drop bars on the road. This confusion likely arises from two desires: one, to use the term road bike to mean any bike used on the road; two, to use the term to refer to the sport oreanted drop bar bikes (on wikipedia inexplicably referred to as a "Racing bicycle". I would like to change the article name to be more conventional, to resolve this confusion. The Road bicycle page should have the "Racing Bicycle" page on it. Keithonearth (talk) 05:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Merge with racing bicycle?

I think it would be a good idea to merge this page with racing bicycle. The similarities between a true racing bicycle and a dropped-bar fitness bicycle are very close. What do others think? -- Parsonscat (talk) 07:07, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry not to have seen this proposal sooner, I think it is a great idea, and would like to see it happen. --Keithonearth (talk) 04:23, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Oppose - Racing bicycles make up only a very small percentage of road bicycles. Ebikeguy (talk) 14:38, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Here in the UK, when someone says "road bike" they mean a racing-style bike or something similar, e.g. a traditional touring bike. This is as distinct from traditional utility bicycles which are - in the main - also ridden on the road. (I think the US manufacturers call that sort of machine a "pavement" bike.) I would say that in this sense, most road bikes are racing bikes.

How universal is this distinction?

The Parson's Cat (talk) 10:49, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

You indicate that a traditional touring bike is essentially similar to a racing bike. I disagree with this assessment entirely. David Herlihy's excellent works on the touring vs. racing culture in France in the early 20th Century shows conclusively that the split between racing and touring bicycles occurred before either style had achieved any sort of dominance in the industry. The two bicycle types are distinctly different, as are single speeds and other road bicycles made by companies such as Rivendell Bicycle Works and Surly Bikes. Racing bicycles are a subset of road bicycles, not vice-versa. If any merge were to occur, it should be merging racing bicycles in to this article. Ebikeguy (talk) 14:41, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi there. I think my point was more that in some parts of the world, phrase "road bike" doesn't just mean "any bike designed for the road". Here in the UK, the phrase "road bike" is used to mean a racing-style bike and their close cousins. I'd agree that merging "racing bike" into "road bike" would be the right way to do things.

British cyclo-touristes - including myself - tend to ride bikes that are essentially not that different from a racing bike, so apologies if my example was a bit regional: see Chris Juden's article to get an idea where we're coming from. However, this is a bit of a red-herring.

My original question is essentially this: in the UK, "road bike" means a lightweight "racing bike" or something similar. Many cycle manufacturers use the same classification. How widespread is this globally?

The Parson's Cat (talk) 14:56, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah! Thank you very much for the clarification. In my 30+ years in the US biking industry, I have not encountered the specific definition of "road bike" to which you refer. Here, a road bicycle in anything ridden on the road, versus a mountain bike that is ridden on trails. It seems there is quite a difference in regional usage. Perhaps we should make reference to such difference in the article? Cheers, Ebikeguy (talk) 15:55, 1 May 2011 (UTC)