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Long time guy-who-works-in-financial-news here. As others have implied, what we are seeing is "business as usual" anytime there is a merger. However, I wouldn't be too quick to go "everything is okay". If WB is willing to scrap a $90M film that was more or less done, I'd say a silly bike race could get a second (critical) look too. At best it slides by unnoticed being their company christmas budget is probably bigger than the amount they earmarked for the series. On the second hand, if the bean counters really start wandering into the creatives arena (which happens) and...

Hey RedBull, keep the World Cup team on standby, you might get it back for pennies on the dollar! Lol

Yea, don't get me wrong, I hate them with every fiber of my being as far as the mechanical.side goes, but dammmmn, the émonda SLR is a damn good looking bike. I will give trek credit for not stem routing stuff, that's the worst of it for sure, and the bars they use are grooved underneath so while the cables are hidden, they aren't inside the bar. They do have a new hybrid, the FX 4/5 which looks rad, but the headset cone spacer has everything routed through it.... And it's a terror. As for why we're talking road bikes...

Yes imo, but trying to convince a customer from buying a 12k cervelo or transition ebike is also frowned upon by the owners and sales guys, who don't have to work on the bikes either.

Was just in a high end road shop and it was bananas how many of the complete road bikes had headset cable routing. High end, low end, medium end, it was everywhere. It's mind-boggling to me because (other than everything working) my #1 priority for my road bike is getting the fit dialed in. Can you imagine rerouting and bleeding brakes AND cables to change your headset spacers? SERIOUSLY?!?!?! At least the Trek spacers break in half.

Just gonna put this here before anyone uses the "L" word. "Loam (/lōm/): a soil with roughly equal proportions of sand, silt, and clay."

Like it or not eBikes are the future there’s a massive amount more lazy people than are fit ones, and there’s already a lot more companies out there that only do eBikes and are being backed by big money

Because that would imply that motorized mountain bikes are a separate activity from human-powered mountain bikes, while the MTB brands are doing everything in their power to persuade consumers of the opposite. In most US states, the bike lobby convinced legislatures to regulate e-bikes as "non-motorized" transportation. The mountain bike industry has effectively won the battle with the motorsports industry to control e-bikes, which has lumped e-bikes into the mtb community regardless of individual users desire to be part of a motorized group. MTB brands, at least in the US, would be reluctant to advertise to an e-bike only space...

Cables: Route them inside, no problem if that is done properly Brake hose: Leave that thing external. I hate having to disconnect the caliper from the hose just to route the hose through the frame. And if you put cables through the headset, I will never ever buy that bike!

First, what serious cyclist doesn't need to service their headset within 5 years? Hell, I have to do mine one every 5 months due to dirt ingress in semi desert like conditions after some good smashing. Also, if anything goes wrong with that brake system you're totally fucked. Smash your bar? Brakes are fucked. Have a crash and cut your line when the headset spins around to far? Brakes are fucked. Road trip you've spent a bunch of money on? No way a shop can fit it in quick to get you going again because it's an hours long job...

This a friendly reminder that there's a lot of horrible external cable routing, too. I've had noisy and rattly hoses and housing, I've had a rock chop my downtube-routed external brakeline in half on a road trip ($70 for a replacement Shimano hose from an LBS, ouch), I've had crazy rubbing and paint wear from cables, I've had below the BB routing (booooo), I've had a bird's nest of cables at the headtube, and I've had 10 foot long derailleur housing because the cable is seemingly routed on every tube of the frame before it arrives at the rear derailleur...

For the love of god no cables through the headset/stem..

Fully external routing: fine. Internal routing, guided: fine. Internal routing, unguided, with large entrance and exit ports: also generally fine. Internal routing, unguided, with small entrance and exit ports: not fine. Through the headset: fuck all the way off.

I've made my opinion on this pretty clear in the past, but.... As a bike shop mechanic, I'm fine with properly routed, internally guided routing that actually improve how the bike works. Yeti, SC, Intense and many other brands have had this for years and it makes for extremely clean, effortless routing, save for Yeti's bullshit dropper routing that pops up in front of the 90 degree corner and catches easy on the frame. There are other brands that offer simple routing that pops out easily and don't take long to sort as well that's not bad. This type of...

I'm fine with internal routing as long as there are ports on both sides of the head tube.

Tests rarely cover longevity.

Should there be a separate thread for ebikes only?