Why are recumbent bicycles and velomobiles illegal in UCI bicycle racing?

Question

As stated in the title. However, the "superman" position is also illegal, and the question applies to that as well.

Motor racing will often lean on safety to explain why there are so many limitations to how a car can be built and configured. In Formula One, e.g. fairings are illegal - it can't go too fast, as it becomes "too dangerous" (which is of course not defined, but that's a different matter). Other reasons for different types of motor sports may claim that the cars (such as in SuperGT or DTM) cannot be too dissimilar from actual production cars. Sure they are heavily modified, but they aren't purely built specifically for racing from the ground up. However, even these modifications are strictly regulated, e.g. there are limits on practically everything to slow the cars down (anything from the engine output to aerodynamics to tires, active geometry, etc.), again for safety reasons.

Even though these are justifications perhaps not everyone would agree with, they are at least some form of justification.

Now, what excuse does e.g. UCI cycling regulations have for banning recubment bicycles?

It doesn't seem like they can use the safety feature. Would a recumbent bicycle or velomobile really be that dangerous? From what I understand, recumbent bicycles are legal to use in many countries and are sold openly.

What about not adhering to the real world, being too dissimilar from "normal" bicycles? That also seems strange, given that again recumbent bicycles are sold in the first place.

The only thing I can think of is that a recumbent bicycle or velomobile is simply too "weird". People don't appreciate the aesthetics of it. Perhaps they also don't learn to ride such bicycles, and are discouraged from trying them.

Is that the reason why such rules are imposed on e.g. Tour de France?

To a naive and rather inexperienced bicyclist myself, this seems very arbitrary and counterproductive. I would like to have more efficient bicycles in general.

However, again since my knowledge of bicycles is limited I hope there is a host of problems I don't think about that makes recumbent bicycles and velomobiles dangerous and impractical. I'm curious what they are.

Now before someone points out that a recumbent bicycle may have some disadvantages, I'm talking about in general. If a fully faired recumbent bicycle or velomobile has more advantages than it has disadvantages, then why are they illegal in racing?

Answer 1

This seems like a pretty good history of the circumstances around the UCI's banning of the recumbent. Your guess seems to be about right: recumbents were perceived as too weird. It's interesting to note that Faure had been racing on recumbents with success and official imprimatur for a while before they were banned. According to that article, there were safety concerns about fairings even back then.

The UCI has generally gotten more and more restrictive about what qualifies as a "bike" (although they have relaxed some rules after creating them—read the Wikipedia article on the hour record for some insight into the back-and-forth) and their current rationale is basically that a member of the public should be able to look at a racing bike and recognize it as a regular bike. There is certainly a chicken-and-egg aspect to this: if more people rode recumbents (or other configurations of bike), those would look like regular bikes. There is also the argument that achievements in cycling should be more attributable to the cyclist than the bike.

I can speculate about other factors playing into these decisions, but that's all it would be—speculation.

Answer 2

There are a number of factors that come into it. The weird factor is a major one. Cycling is a sport with a lot of history and tradition which many want to preserve. There are many technological innovations which could improve the performance of cyclists, but they each take it one step further away from the roots of the sport. You see examples of this, just look at the bikes of the Boardman era on the track. Bikes with no seat-tube and bizarre frame shapes made for faster times, but really seemed to have nothing in common with the bikes that racers had been riding in these events in previous decades. To get a sense of consistency and maintain tradition in the sport, the UCI brought in the double triangle rule along with a few others to ensure that any innovations that were brought in would still recognisably resemble the bikes ridden in the very first iterations of the tour de France.

As for safety, that would also be a major concern if some riders in the peloton began racing on recumbent bicycles. While a recumbent bicycle might be perfectly safe you ride by yourself or with other recumbent riders, it would be a disaster to mix them in with a peloton of riders on regular bikes. In a peloton, you don't have the luxury of a neat, organised paceline to know where riders around you are. It's a huge mess of riders jammed into a tiny space and to move through it, you take whatever gap you can. You rely on your peripheral vision to know where you can go, because you need to keep your eyes forward to not crash into riders around you. A recumbent being much lower to the ground would have riders moving across thinking that there is a gap only to bump into the recumbent rider. This would lead to far more crashes in the bunch. To allow recumbents in road racing, you would have to entirely phase out regular bicycles in the peloton. The other option is that they could replace time-trial bikes and only be ridden in time-trial stages, as time-trial bikes are also unsafe in a peloton, so are not allowed in road racing, but then there is a second set of rules on which bikes are allowed in time-trial stages.

Answer 3

the Recumbent bikes have their own federation/competition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle

I guess the UCI reasoning is to find out who is the best athlete using the approved bicycle. Everybody has the same bike and the only difference is the runner.

IHPVA on the other hand put not limit on the bike and the goal is to find out which couple bike+athlete is the best.

There is some car competition where everybody has the same car (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Clio_Cup for example) and the goal is to find out who is the best driver/mechanics.

Answer 4

First of all: unfaired recumbents and faired recumbents racing are two different classes currently and adding unfaired recumbents would be far from as dramatic as faired ones. (An unfaired recumbent compares to a TT bike, like a TT bike compares to a roadbike basically, while a faired one is much faster)

While I agree with most of the answers above, the main reason to keep things the way they are (with the exception of TT ) is that the mechanics and tactical decisions of roadracing would change drastically if recumbents were allowed for the following reasons: 1. They cause less drag, which means there is less reason to keep the peloton together. 2. The rider cant see the front of their own front wheel, which makes it a lot harder to stay in a close formation, and would make it a lot more dangerous to try to do so.

What makes roadracing exciting for me is watching the tactcal decision of when to push it and when to just hang on - that part of the sport would be a lot less important if recumbents were allowed in UCI road races.

Answer 5

The problem with recumbents is that they would make cycling an entirely different sport, something that is won with aerodynamics in the flat regions, as opposed to for example climbs. It would make entry costs of the sport far higher, because aerodynamic recumbents are expensive. I suspect it would also put a premium on small cyclist size (because smaller is more aerodynamic), so the ones winning the race would generally be the shortest cyclists.

We have to remember that cycling is a sport that is not isolated from the concept of what is considered a "bicycle". Cycling is a sport that uses general purpose bicycles, something that are considered by the majority of the world population something they could consider even using. The majority of cyclists won't consider recumbents a realistic option, probably partially because they're expensive, partially because they're unstandardized, partially because they really suck at uphills.

In a similar manner, you could of course ask why won't we add for example motors to bicycles -- or for that matter, eliminate the bicycle completely and use only legs for propulsion. The main reason we won't is that these would also make it an entirely different sport.

I'm sure there are races for recumbents too, after all every vehicle built by humans is occasionally used in racing as well (yes, even Bromptons are raced). Why practically nobody watches recumbent racing on television is because recumbent is not something they can relate to, something they could consider buying and using.

Answer 6

The hour record for a recumbent faired bike is somewhere at the 90 kilometers. Meanwhile, the hour record on a "normal" bike is somewhere at the 54 km.
Faired recumbent bikes will smoke any other kind of bike on flat stages, and wind from the front will make the difference even greater. Meanwhile, side wind which would be uncomfortable for a normal race bike will sweep fully faired recumbent bikes from the road. Also, while the performance difference between a lightweight climbing bike and a aero one is minor anywhere but in races (6.8 to 8-9 kilograms), the recumbent bike weighs 21 kilograms.
In short, recumbent bike racing is a different sport, just like drag racing and Formula 1.

And by the way, faired recumbent bikes look just like small cars

Answer 7

I think this is just a problem of money, and performance, security and technical progress is completely out of consideration...

If you have a look at the UCI financial report you see that 1/3 of their revenues comes from "media and marketing rights", and another third from "hosting and registration". So 1/3 of their income comes from the fact that general public are watching the events, and they do so because they can relate to their personal experience with cycling. Recumbents are not for the general public because it is not what a child learns first, and because recumbents are less agile in heavy town traffic.

Recumbents are so much more efficient that a mixed race with uprights gives no chance to the latter. So if UCI allows recumbents, all road and track competitions would immediately shift to all-recumbents. But then less spectators, so less revenues. And maybe also less participants, so also less revenues.

Don't forget that UCI is based in Switzerland, and it is quite probable that UCI head staff love money more than sport or other considerations exposed in this thread.

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I would also add a consideration about health: if you consult https://www.aafp.org/afp/2001/0515/p2007.html, you see that the practice of cycling can lead to many traumas.

For the traumas caused by collisions, the recumbent position with feet first is much more safe than with uprights, where the head is exposed first. I've been falling from my recumbent dozen of time while having fun off-road, and I never had a bruise, only scratches by bushes..

And there are the trauma caused by the heavy practice of cycling (and so the competitors under the responsability of UCI): "Overuse injuries may contribute to a variety of musculoskeletal complaints, compression neuropathies, perineal and genital complaints". Those risks are vastly reduced or annihilated on a recumbent.

So we can say that UCI does not care about those considerations, money is king!

Answer 8

The UCI cycling regulations began banning recumbents when recumbent bikes began to win the races, very early on in the history of the UCI. Later UCI also banned (other) improvements on standard bicycles which made for better times.

They just do not want to accept that their favorite bike is not the best human powered vehicle.

It is not a given that a person on a recumbent will win every race, but the averages for fully faired bikes are so much higher than diamond framed bikes, they will not take the risk to allow those in the races.

All the other arguments are only there to hide the real reason.