Disc Brakes Took Over the Cycling 

World. Here’s Why That Was a Mistake.

So long rim brakes, we knew 

There are some things people never get over, even after the rest of the world moved on long ago: the Alamo; the Dodgers moving to Los Angeles; even the disappearance of the McRib. If you’re the sort of cyclist who favors simple, serviceable, and durable equipment, then I bet your Alamo, like mine, is the bicycle industry’s abandonment of rim brakes in favor of discs. Alas, unlike the McRib, mainstream bike companies have no intention of bringing rim brakes back periodically just to humor you. Rim brakes are gone forever, never to be seen on “serious” bikes again.

The rim-brake-versus-disc-brake “argument,” if there ever was one, ended years ago. Rim brakes lost, disc brakes won. While discs have been the standard on mountain bikes since the nineties, the decisive moment came in 2018, when the UCI, the world governing body of cycling, finally allowed them on road bikes. Roadies were the last line of defense for rim brakes on performance bicycles. After that, they quickly began to vanish from the big companies’ offerings across all categories, and today, no matter what kind of bike you’re buying, disc brakes are more or less the standard. Consumers simply expect them, and experts dismiss anyone who continues to look askance at disc brakes, usually labeling them a “retrogrouch.”

When you look around you today and see all these disc brakes you’d just assume that cyclists were fed up with rim brakes’ poor braking power and demanded something better. This isn’t the case; most people were perfectly happy with the stopping power of rim brakes because they work. Cantilever brakes posed some challenges to mountain bikers, almost all of which were solved with the V-brake. Roadies were not only satisfied with their rim brakes but were horrified at the prospect of discs supplanting them. That is until they finally rolled over when the pros (who ride whatever they’re paid to ride) accepted them. Meanwhile nobody who raced cyclocross  asked for disc brakes, which is why the cantilever brake was the standard in the sport for years, even after the V-brake had succeeded it in mountain biking.

Then Why Did We Get Them?

Mountain bikes got disc brakes because as they evolved into pedal-powered motocross bikes with front and rear suspension. The overly complex frame designs required hydraulic hoses and relocation of the calipers. (Yeah, that’s right, I don’t like suspension either.) Road bikes got them because the carbon rims that took over in the pro ranks make for a lousy braking surface. Cyclocross bikes got them because cyclocross bikes became popular with laypeople, and by then the average consumer was told to believe any bike with knobby tires needed to have disc brakes—a rare example of amateurs determining what equipment the pros rode and not the other way around.

If Disc Brakes Allow You To Use Stuff Like Full Suspension And Carbon Rims, Then Clearly They’re Better. Right?

Sure, they’re better if you want that stuff, but a lot of riders don’t need it, or realize they’d be happier without it. I believe in the free market, so if you want to buy a complex and expensive mountain bike that you shuttle back and forth to the trail in the back of a pickup then go for it. But that doesn’t mean riding a simple bike can’t be just as fun, or even more fun, which lots of people are rediscovering. There’s now even a term for it: underbiking. Although I’d posit most people are just overbiking.

Mountain biking had come into its own well before disc brakes and even front

 Ok thats enough...

time to start drinking.