A tribute to Arielle Martin’s Olympic hopes and dreams. Here’s her father building the wheels that she was supposed to race today…
May be slow, but it looks to be a pretty balanced method. I’m sure the man can fully lace and true a wheel in less than 15 minutes if he wanted to. I can, but it’s something else when you’re doing your best for your daughter. (The people who do wheels for Alex rims I’ve clocked at less than 2 mins to fully spoke a wheel)
I work with Travis at Mad Dog Cycles, Provo, Utah. He is the best wheel builder I have ever seen, those wheels were for Arielle who was supposed to race today, but had a mechanical failure in her final training session before leaving on her plane to London. At first her injuries were life threatening, but she’s expected to make a full recovery. It might look slow, but I would take my time as well if I was building wheels for the Olympics…
A very touching video that made question how good a father I am for my own daughters. So sad to hear that Arielle is not able to make it to the Olympics here in England as the course looks amazing. My thoughts are with her family and hoping that see makes a good recovery soon. Sweet looking wheels too Mr Martin!
As for the comments above – ‘Good things take time’ as Jack Daniels used to say…
Cool video. The lacing technique doesn’t really matter; since these wheels have (had) a good chance of being on TV, his method does reduce the possibilities of the spokes scratching the rims. He’s not getting paid for this, no reason to hurry…
I guess I am knit-picking, but does it look like white grease was added to the pawls? I believe this is a no-no, according to Profile. Remove the pawls and add a tiny dab in the pocket of the driver, but not the whole pawl where it contacts the drive ring. BMXers put a ton of power down, especially at the elite level. Pawl slippage would be bad, bad, bad.
The message under the rim strip was a nice touch.
