Recently, some athletes started questioning whether it’s safe to ride on a time trial bike. After Tom Pidcock and Chris Froome shared their point of view, it’s now world record holder Victor Campenaerts who shines a light on it.
Campenaerts himself definitely knows how to handle a TT-bike, because he’s the reigning world record holder on the track (55,089 meters in one hour). “I don’t follow Froome”, he told Sporza in a reaction to Froome’s recent video. “Time trial is a beautiful and innovative discipline. The evolution of cycling is based on time trialing. For bike manufacturers and further professionalization of the sport, time trial is important.”
Campenaerts then refers to mountain biking. “With a mountain bike, training on the road is safer than with a road bike. You have better grip on the mountain bike, a broader stir, and you’re more stable. But we don’t all go out and train on a mountain bike, right? We ride our road bikes. Those are indeed less safe, but they are faster. And in cycling races, it’s all about speed. Of course, a time trial bike on the open road is dangerous, just like doing sprint training. It’s a matter of finding the right roads, with little traffic and few side roads. You always need to be careful when cycling. Dangerous situations can always occur.”
