>>1984903>why did bikes in the 80s and 90s always have like 13-21t cassette/fws and 52/42 chainrings? why the absurdly high gearing?Which bikes? Lets say you have:
>Shitter tier (gaspipe bsos)>Sport tier (entry level)>Club tier (decent good-value stuff)>Race tier (exotic, high end)The high gearing makes sense on club and race tier bikes because
>they're bought by strong riders many of whom basically just time trial on the flat >they're made to be aesthetic >customizing them makes sense The one that really annoys me is how most of the nicer womens/step through/mixtes, (usually just a variant of an ok 'mens' bike) still spec around a 52/42 crankset.
Women who wanted fast road bikes bought fast road bikes, these things were solely beaters, usually ridden by weaker riders.
At the shitter end it was just BSO things, a shitter masquerading as a serious bike, but many companies had a sport or club mixte that was a reasonably nice bike and taiwan/japan had many 110 doubles that they could have specced.
Refusal to adopt unracer values is patriarchal oppression of women.