The gear range of yesterday’s racers would make today’s wince.
You might think that when derailleur gears became popular, cyclists would have worked out the highest and lowest sprockets they needed, fitted them at the extremes, and then filled in the gaps with evenly spaced intermediate gears.
It didn’t work out that way.
Partly that was because early systems only had three gears — riders in hilly areas would have ended up with huge gaps between those three gears — and partly because early derailleur systems couldn’t cope with that sort of range anyway.
This story is from the November 22, 2018 edition of CYCLING WEEKLY.
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This story is from the November 22, 2018 edition of CYCLING WEEKLY.
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