So, you wanna just skip to the end? We can just cut this whole damn thing right here with three letters. DNS. Anyway, carrying on ...
Everything went wonderfully on the way up to the venue. I had everything laid out in a much more orderly manner than I typically do, and my morning went well. I even got to watch a very boring stage of the Tour.
I got to the race, signed in, got the number pinned, and started warming up. The warm-up went really well, I got the right amount of big efforts, the right amount of spinning, and the right amount of cruising. Everything was going great. 15 minutes before the start, I took a lap of the course and then stopped by the porta-john to make sure I was as light on liquids as possible.
As I got on my bike and went around the first turn, I stood up to get some speed, and crack! My bars went completely limp in my hands. Just like ...
You can figure it out. I thought that the bolts had been loose or come loose, but after I got off and looked closely, I realized that the faceplate of my stem had broke. I figured I was hosed, but I went to the car and got a 4mm allen wrench, and started asking people if they were going to stick around, and if I could borrow their faceplate.
I had no luck whatsoever, and became a spectator. My teammate came in top-10 which was good, but I'd bet that if there were 2 of us, at least one would have been top-5.
This is the part where I give you my opinion that's not related to racing.
The modern bike industry is really pushing its luck. I bought this stem a couple years ago before the Shimano PRO stuff had landed in the U.S. and I paid a pretty penny for it. It was the only 130mm stem I could find, though, and I kind of had to.
The reason the stem broke wasn't because I was using it in an improper manner, and it wasn't because of something ridiculous like over-tightening the bolts. The only way that would work would be if I had tightened them so much that I had flattened material outside of the milled/molded counter-bore. And I've never installed my bars while I was giant, green, and pissed off so I don't think that's possible.
The reason it broke was because Shimano was trying to make the lightest stem they possibly could. I've known the thing is flexy and bendy at all the wrong times, but I didn't expect that it was made with so little aluminum that it would just plain break. Something about that seems utterly wrong. Of course, it's not brand-new, but then neither are a lot of my other components that are on my bike. This, in my opinion, is a bit like the Madone Headtubes that keep breaking.
And what will Trek's fix for the problem be? They'll add more material to the carbon fiber layup. That's it. Just put material where it should have been in the first place. Instead of making the product as light as possible while still being strong and reliable, we're seeing the big bike manufacturers battle each other for lightness at the expense of making a worthwhile product.
Looks like I've got all the excuse I need to buy that 3T stem I've been eyeing. Unless someone wants to give me $300ish to buy another Shimano PRO stem. Have you seen the one Cav rides? Apparently they hook up their best riders with something worthwhile, and then put a 5000% markup on it.
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