This is just insane!
Zio Lorenzo thought this MUST be an April Fool's joke! Is it?
A 17 cm stem? Really? They're not writing about crankarms, are they? As in 170 mm? Here's their explanation: "Rutsch stands 6’5″ and rides a 58cm bike. To get his fit right, Rutsch runs a 170mm stem, which is long even by tall WorldTour rider standards. As with the rest of his EF Education-EasyPost teammates, he can take his pick between Cannondale’s SuperSix EVO road race bike as the SystemSix aero bike."
Sadly, we guess he CAN'T "take his pick" of a bike that FITS!? There are a couple of larger sizes available but we guess those don't fit right either for some reason?
Zio couldn't help but think back to the Cannondale bikes he saw at the 1988 Coors Classic race. The Crest Cycling Team, maybe? Zio couldn't find any photos online and his old ones from back then are long-lost, but those bikes were just as terrible when it came to fitting the riders who raced on them.
At that race Zio saw a couple of them with aluminum seatposts, a sort-of standard SR Laprade type post but with square sections of aluminum welded-on horizontally to allow the saddle enough setback. We're talking lengths of aluminum bar-stock like this stem! The Cannondale bikes sold to the public at this time had notoriously steep seattube angles, so it was no big surprise to see the seatposts modified to get the saddle back far enough on these off-the-rack frames.
Some things never change? Bikes still don't come in enough sizes but the makers now try to make that a feature rather than a bug. No doubt it's great for Mr. Inventory Manager and the company's bottom-line profits but we'll never understand why people spend thousands on frames that come only in t-shirt sizes when for the same money they can get made-to-measure.
YOU don't have to ride a way-too-small bike with an insanely long (17 cm is a length Zio assumes was custom-made since who else is going to need such a thing?) as for the same price as one of these "too small, too big or close-enough" sizes you can have a made-to-measure bike from FAVALORO.
Tell 'em we sent you and skip that 17 cm stem!!!
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