The other day, I received a rather amusing comment regarding the Roval (ロヴァール) wheels that I'm always criticizing. Here's the original text:
Regarding the C24 and Roval wheels that のむラボ calls "crappy stupid wheels," the C24 was used by Aizawa Kogyo's Kusaba at last year's All Japan Championship for sprinting victory because they "wanted to use GP5000 in the race," and Roval has collected numerous victories in World Tour class races. What are your thoughts on this? I personally feel that wheels with high rigidity are good wheels, but this contradicts the above two examples. As for Roval, there's a possibility of professional tuning with spoke gauges changed, but the C24 used by Aizawa Kogyo is believed to be stock since former Aizawa rider Ito introduced it on his blog.
So then, what do I think?
The fact that Roval is a crappy stupid wheel and the fact that it wins races don't contradict each other at all. They're completely separate issues. That's it.
However, this is important. The very reason manufacturers and brands tout race results is because a certain number of people think this way. If the choice of winners and the equipment of victors are always correct and everything else is inferior, then for example, at the recent Ibukiyama hillclimb, a certain class winner was using a wheel I built, but does that mean every single rider who finished 2nd and below that day made a stupid equipment choice? Of course not. It just means the 1st place rider was simply stronger to begin with.
The other day, I had a customer who bought a のむラボ wheel 2.5 front and 3 rear five years ago, and separately built another 2.5 front and 3 rear with slightly different spoke configurations. When I talked to them on the phone, they said something like "Thanks to your wheels, I became rank 1 in domestic triathlon!" and I responded with something like "Huh, well, that's just because you're strong," and I apologize—it's not that I wasn't happy. It's just that I genuinely don't think "Yeah yeah, you got 1st place thanks to my wheels, be grateful," and... I've probably written this before, but I'm always nervous about what would happen if a spoke in a wheel I built broke during the most important race of a rider's year. I can't predict these things, so it's mostly beyond my control. The most important thing is that the wheels people like and use don't break. When I looked up that customer's name while writing this, they really were ranked #1 in JTU age-group rankings for 2021. Amazing. The rider, not my wheels.
A super strong high school athlete came in the other day with their father and said "I won a race in March," and I responded with "Huh, well..." (and so on) ← You really do this all the time, don't you. They came in wanting me to look at their front derailleur because it wasn't shifting well before competing in Hiroshima on April 17th, and when I checked the results just now, they won that one too.So I guess the chain didn't drop or anything. Amazing. The rider, not my wheels. By the way, in that race the winning rider probably beat quite a few Roval users, but according to the comment at the beginning, does that prove the excellence of the wheels I built? At least for that day and place. I don't think so. And that's not modesty on my part. Oh wait, actually the winning rider's wheels were Roval that I rebuilt. His dad always tells me "The engagement got better and now it runs so smoothly!" and his son is really happy about it. "Huh, well..." (and so on) ← Okay stop already.
Whether a certain rider praises certain equipment for political reasons or from their true heart is irrelevant. Either way, it's just someone else's judgment. Of course you can use it as reference, but value your own judgment. Just yesterday I got a call from someone saying that a Roval CL50, especially the rear wheel, just doesn't feel fast and they want it rebuilt. But if that person hears some famous rider praising the CL50 or sees footage of someone winning with a CL50 in a race broadcast, would their perception of the wheel they're using actually change? Maybe it would for the person who wrote the initial comment. After all, if it didn't, that would create a contradiction, apparently.
For instance, I don't object to manufacturers and brands using the advertising approach of "our frame (or wheels) won the Tour de France, proving their excellence!" but I myself find it embarrassing or just distasteful, so I don't do it. I've mentioned about three instances from the past month or so that I can recall.
So if you think "Roval wins big in pro racing so it must be excellent! And I have no complaints actually using it!" please by all means keep using it that way. I respect that judgment. If you think "it feels dead, can you do something about it?" I'm on it. It should probably improve. I've never once been told it was better before. But honestly, with the freewheel side and non-freewheel side final crossing each having so clearly more spoke deformation on the freewheel side... I haven't seen another rear wheel quite like that.
As for what top pros do with wheels that even amateurs who barely race feel are dead, have poor engagement, or have brake rub issues—I think they use stock market products. I don't think they change spoke gauges. Even if you tension stock spokes to the point of ignoring durability, they don't transform much. It rarely fixes brake rub on its own. Recently disc brake bikes are standard, so the brake rub noise doesn't reveal the low lateral rigidity anymore. I think pros handle dead wheels as "that's just how they are" and use them skillfully. Regardless of what they actually think, "eating it up nicely in front of others" is part of the job. Though I vaguely recall teams that, perhaps because they couldn't bear how poor it was, used Lightweight wheels despite Shimano being the component supplier, or teams using GIANT Trinity time trial bikes instead of Scott's Plasma even though Scott supplied the frames.
This is a tangent, but if you're going to make professional spec wheels with larger spoke weight distribution while detuning consumer amateur models for rigidity and reducing spoke ratio to make catalog weight lighter... I think you should first fix the fact that recent frames are way too stiff. It's like with skis—if you roughly have four categories of pro/advanced/intermediate/beginner, people belonging to the lower two categories buy equipment for the upper two, either showing off or without realizing it. With bicycles, even with stiff frames or wheels, people riding at average speeds under 30 km/h and distances around 100 km often just experience the good parts like "pedal and it flies" and finish their ride happy. But once you reach a level where you're doing something like the northern section (Kita-ko) of Lake Biwa from the Biwako Bridge in a little over four hours, you start complaining about hard frames or hard wheels like Racing Zero, saying things like "my legs get tired in the second half." In other words, stronger riders extract more performance from equipment, so they end up knowing the bad parts too. It's like how with USB device removal: beginners just yank it out, intermediate users click "eject hardware safely," and advanced users just yank it out—for different reasons, beginners and advanced users take the same action. Similarly, there's a phenomenon where only beginners and advanced riders praise certain equipment. Globally speaking, I personally think the riders most troubled by stiff frames are those at the top of Japan's corporate racing teams, but... Oh, I'm not trying to lead this into "so strong riders conversely seek comfortable wheels." I think that comes down to personal preference and judgment.
So rather than just "this rider says this" and "this review says that," it would be good to also value "but I think this." That creates a contradiction? Go argue about it forever, you idiot.
Regarding the C24 and Roval wheels that のむラボ calls "crappy stupid wheels," the C24 was used by Aizawa Kogyo's Kusaba at last year's All Japan Championship for sprinting victory because they "wanted to use GP5000 in the race," and Roval has collected numerous victories in World Tour class races. What are your thoughts on this? I personally feel that wheels with high rigidity are good wheels, but this contradicts the above two examples. As for Roval, there's a possibility of professional tuning with spoke gauges changed, but the C24 used by Aizawa Kogyo is believed to be stock since former Aizawa rider Ito introduced it on his blog.
So then, what do I think?
The fact that Roval is a crappy stupid wheel and the fact that it wins races don't contradict each other at all. They're completely separate issues. That's it.
However, this is important. The very reason manufacturers and brands tout race results is because a certain number of people think this way. If the choice of winners and the equipment of victors are always correct and everything else is inferior, then for example, at the recent Ibukiyama hillclimb, a certain class winner was using a wheel I built, but does that mean every single rider who finished 2nd and below that day made a stupid equipment choice? Of course not. It just means the 1st place rider was simply stronger to begin with.
The other day, I had a customer who bought a のむラボ wheel 2.5 front and 3 rear five years ago, and separately built another 2.5 front and 3 rear with slightly different spoke configurations. When I talked to them on the phone, they said something like "Thanks to your wheels, I became rank 1 in domestic triathlon!" and I responded with something like "Huh, well, that's just because you're strong," and I apologize—it's not that I wasn't happy. It's just that I genuinely don't think "Yeah yeah, you got 1st place thanks to my wheels, be grateful," and... I've probably written this before, but I'm always nervous about what would happen if a spoke in a wheel I built broke during the most important race of a rider's year. I can't predict these things, so it's mostly beyond my control. The most important thing is that the wheels people like and use don't break. When I looked up that customer's name while writing this, they really were ranked #1 in JTU age-group rankings for 2021. Amazing. The rider, not my wheels.
A super strong high school athlete came in the other day with their father and said "I won a race in March," and I responded with "Huh, well..." (and so on) ← You really do this all the time, don't you. They came in wanting me to look at their front derailleur because it wasn't shifting well before competing in Hiroshima on April 17th, and when I checked the results just now, they won that one too.
Whether a certain rider praises certain equipment for political reasons or from their true heart is irrelevant. Either way, it's just someone else's judgment. Of course you can use it as reference, but value your own judgment. Just yesterday I got a call from someone saying that a Roval CL50, especially the rear wheel, just doesn't feel fast and they want it rebuilt. But if that person hears some famous rider praising the CL50 or sees footage of someone winning with a CL50 in a race broadcast, would their perception of the wheel they're using actually change? Maybe it would for the person who wrote the initial comment. After all, if it didn't, that would create a contradiction, apparently.
For instance, I don't object to manufacturers and brands using the advertising approach of "our frame (or wheels) won the Tour de France, proving their excellence!" but I myself find it embarrassing or just distasteful, so I don't do it. I've mentioned about three instances from the past month or so that I can recall.
So if you think "Roval wins big in pro racing so it must be excellent! And I have no complaints actually using it!" please by all means keep using it that way. I respect that judgment. If you think "it feels dead, can you do something about it?" I'm on it. It should probably improve. I've never once been told it was better before. But honestly, with the freewheel side and non-freewheel side final crossing each having so clearly more spoke deformation on the freewheel side... I haven't seen another rear wheel quite like that.
As for what top pros do with wheels that even amateurs who barely race feel are dead, have poor engagement, or have brake rub issues—I think they use stock market products. I don't think they change spoke gauges. Even if you tension stock spokes to the point of ignoring durability, they don't transform much. It rarely fixes brake rub on its own. Recently disc brake bikes are standard, so the brake rub noise doesn't reveal the low lateral rigidity anymore. I think pros handle dead wheels as "that's just how they are" and use them skillfully. Regardless of what they actually think, "eating it up nicely in front of others" is part of the job. Though I vaguely recall teams that, perhaps because they couldn't bear how poor it was, used Lightweight wheels despite Shimano being the component supplier, or teams using GIANT Trinity time trial bikes instead of Scott's Plasma even though Scott supplied the frames.
This is a tangent, but if you're going to make professional spec wheels with larger spoke weight distribution while detuning consumer amateur models for rigidity and reducing spoke ratio to make catalog weight lighter... I think you should first fix the fact that recent frames are way too stiff. It's like with skis—if you roughly have four categories of pro/advanced/intermediate/beginner, people belonging to the lower two categories buy equipment for the upper two, either showing off or without realizing it. With bicycles, even with stiff frames or wheels, people riding at average speeds under 30 km/h and distances around 100 km often just experience the good parts like "pedal and it flies" and finish their ride happy. But once you reach a level where you're doing something like the northern section (Kita-ko) of Lake Biwa from the Biwako Bridge in a little over four hours, you start complaining about hard frames or hard wheels like Racing Zero, saying things like "my legs get tired in the second half." In other words, stronger riders extract more performance from equipment, so they end up knowing the bad parts too. It's like how with USB device removal: beginners just yank it out, intermediate users click "eject hardware safely," and advanced users just yank it out—for different reasons, beginners and advanced users take the same action. Similarly, there's a phenomenon where only beginners and advanced riders praise certain equipment. Globally speaking, I personally think the riders most troubled by stiff frames are those at the top of Japan's corporate racing teams, but... Oh, I'm not trying to lead this into "so strong riders conversely seek comfortable wheels." I think that comes down to personal preference and judgment.
So rather than just "this rider says this" and "this review says that," it would be good to also value "but I think this." That creates a contradiction? Go argue about it forever, you idiot.