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Hincapie Finishes AToC Stage 1 With Smashed Carbon Easton Front Wheel!

Written by Tyler Benedict
6 Comments
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George Hincapie finished yesterday’s Amgen Tour of California Stage 1 with a massively damaged Easton EC90 carbon tubular front wheel.

From Easton’s PR folks:

If you check out the video, you’ll see that he was able to ride it in despite a pretty massive gash in the side of the rim. You’ll also see that the wheel remained incredibly true.

Why did it stay so true? According to our product manager Adam Marriott and engineer Chuck Teixeira if you build the wheel with very even spoke tension it will stay that way, even if you put a pedal through the sidewall of the rim.

We’re pretty excited to see this happen and its one of those things that probably wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have the wheels under guys like George and Cadel.

Video after the break…
Tyler Benedict
11,282 articles

Tyler Benedict is the Founder of Bikerumor.com, where he’s been writing about the latest bikes, components, and cycling technology for almost two decades. Prior to that, Tyler launched and built multiple sports nutrition brands and consumer goods companies, mostly as an excuse to travel and ride in new places.

Based in North Carolina, Tyler also loves the Vanlife & family adventure travel and is always on the lookout for the next shiny new part and off-grid adventure.

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slippyfish
slippyfish
14 years ago

Gotta love PR take on things – Is there such a thing as “incredibly true”? Is “true-ness” (wheel truth?) relative so that there can be degrees of true? As in, “this wheel will still rotate between the brake pads despite having a huge hole in the side”? Things are either true, or not true, which would make them false, or crooked.

Regardless…That’s pretty gnarly.

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Tyler Benedict
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Tyler Benedict
14 years ago
Reply to  slippyfish

Word is, that hole was caused by a pedal going through it during the crash in Stage 1.

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Sean
Sean
14 years ago

Kinda creeps me out the way he keeps putting his hand down his pants in the first bit of the video. I keep expecting him to pull out something I don’t want to see.

(I know, I know, it’s his apron pocket. But still…)

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Dekinorman
Dekinorman
14 years ago

Slippyfish: he is talking about the trueness of the wheel i.e. the relative lack of side-to-side runout of the rim with respect to a fixed point measured from the hub axle. Wheels that are not built as well would have much larger damage, and would not run ‘true’, causing brake rub, or worse, complete tacoing, necessitating a wheel change.
Pretty impressive wheel!

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Bob
Bob
14 years ago

Agreed Dekinorman. Slippyfish, the definition of true is not just the opposite of false, it actually has a host of meanings
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/true
with number twelve probably being the one we use to apply it to bicycle wheels.
true 12. exactly or accurately shaped, formed, fitted, or placed, as a surface, instrument, or part of a mechanism.
And we do use it as a relative term, as in how true, or how not crooked, they are.

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