Bike Intelligencer » Redmond Derby Days criterium http://bikeintelligencer.com All bike, all the time Sat, 04 May 2013 01:18:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Not a mountain biker disrupts Redmond Derby Days http://bikeintelligencer.com/2009/07/not-a-mountain-biker-disrupts-redmond-derby-days/ http://bikeintelligencer.com/2009/07/not-a-mountain-biker-disrupts-redmond-derby-days/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:17:36 +0000 Paul Andrews, BI editor http://bikeintelligencer.wordpress.com/?p=973 BikeHugger has a post on an unfortunate crash involving a rogue bike rider at the Redmond Derby Days criterium last weekend. The comments queue sheds a bit of light, particularly the posts by an injured rider, but this thing needs to be sorted out. (Another blog post calls the rider a kid who “just wanted to have fun.”)

First off, I’d suggest a shift in nomenclature. This guy is not a mountain biker, he’s a bike rider who either doesn’t know what he’s doing or is conducting some kind of joke.

What he is riding is not a mountain bike, either. It’s a shitbike. It says Huffy on the head tube and even if that is not authentic (a joke), its components are from the 1980s. I’m not exaggerating. Thumb shifters haven’t been around for two decades. I cannot identify the caliper brakeset but it looks pretty antediluvian too. The stem even looks to have a 1-inch, threaded headset. Sheesh…when did those things exit the biking landscape? This thing is a mountain bike the way a tape deck is an iPod.

I’m a former roadie and current mountain biker and am well aware of misconceptions on both sides of the fence. To get a factual airing of the incident, it will help to avoid snap terminology.

Someone needs to track down the rider in question and find out what he was up to. And then ask race organizers how it was allowed to happen.

We’ll try to keep you posted on further details…

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