Burning Question: What if every Road Bike had 40mm tyres?
What would that mean for racing, riding, rider safety and performance?
I raced in the 1980’s on 18mm tyres. They were Continental, I think. Or perhaps Michelin. It was a long time ago. What I remember more clearly than the brand was the size and the sketchy ride feel. You see, to prevent flats, we routinely inflated them to well over 100psi and often closer to 120. The ride was harsh, we flatted often and had to brake way in advance of corners or stop streets. At the time, that was relatively normal for riding and racing.
In fact, there was a kind of pride in it. A harsh ride wasn’t a drawback, it was proof you were doing it properly. If your fillings weren’t rattling loose on rough roads, your tyres were probably underinflated or too big. Looking back, it feels completely ridiculous.
Today most riders would see an 18mm tyre and assume it’s a joke – or a mistake. Yet that was genuinely considered top-level racing equipment. Which raises an interesting question I’ve been thinking about for some months. If we once believed 18mm tyres inflated to 120psi represented the pinnacle of performance, what assumptions are we making today that future riders will find equally baffling?
One candidate might be tyre width. Specifically, why have we collectively decided that somewhere around 28mm is where road cycling should stop? What would happen if professional racing, and eventually recreational cycling, moved toward tyres in the region of 40mm? Would racing become slower? Probably, at least a little. Would bikes become heavier? Almost certainly. Would some traditionalists complain that road cycling was losing its soul? Without question.
But would racing and riding become safer, more fun and attract even more newbies? I think that’s a question worth asking. Because when we talk about safety in professional cycling, the conversation usually focuses on barriers, road furniture, the weather, race organization and rider behaviour. Rarely does anyone talk about the tyre.
Professional cycling isn’t just professional cycling. It’s a showroom. The bikes used by the pros become the bikes sold to the public. Manufacturers optimize products around whatever the elite level adopts. Recreational cyclists copy what they see in the professional peloton. We’ve already watched this happen with tyre widths. Thirty years ago recreational riders were told they needed narrow tyres to be fast. Today many of those same riders happily ride 30mm or 32mm tyres and wonder why they ever tolerated anything narrower.
The industry’s shift towards 28mm wide tyres didn’t start with recreational riders. It started at the top. I think, if professional racing ever embraced tyres somewhere in the region of 40mm, manufacturers would adapt. Frames would be designed around them. Wheels would be optimized around them. Aerodynamics would be developed around them. And eventually millions of riders would benefit from bicycles that are more comfortable, more capable on every road, have less flats, have better braking / emergency stopping characteristics and are simply a whole lot safer.
In fact, the biggest safety gains might not occur in the professional peloton at all. They might occur on weekend club rides, mass-participation events, daily training rides and the countless kilometers ridden by ordinary riders who never pin on a race number. They will all benefit from the bigger contact patch and better grip from the wider tyre.
Perhaps 40mm isn’t the answer. Perhaps it’s 35mm. Perhaps it’s 38mm. Perhaps future technology will take us in a completely different direction. But history suggests one thing. Cycling has repeatedly discovered that tyres once considered impossibly wide eventually become normal.
After all, I once raced on 18mm tyres at 120psi and thought that made perfect sense. Maybe the more interesting question isn’t whether tyres around 40mm sound ridiculous today. It’s whether cyclists in 2050 will wonder why we thought they were. //
| IMAGES: Gary Perkin, Max Sullivan |