Bianchi has always believed that fit and handling are the most important invisible elements that you should consider when buying a bicycle.
Fit is one of the most difficult things to explain, but when you idea bike that fits well it is the most overt and obvious feeling of being one with your machine.
Handling is the result of many factors, but how a bike handles is largely determined by the frame geometry.
Some bike companies oversimplify the issue by offering a separate “women’s bike” line; but, for the most part, those designs are based on generalizations about women’s bodies.
One company with such a line makes none of its “women’s bikes” larger than 54cm. Do your special geometry needs magically disappear if you are a woman who needs a larger frame?
Designing bikes with a geometry based on rider size and physical characteristics is the most important starting point for how bike fits and rides; but bikes do not have gender. Components do not have gender.
Humans do not come in neat, formulaic marketing proportions.
And certainly, women do not come in one body type or ride one certain way. When you fit people on a day-to-day basis, as I did for almost ten years in a bike shop, you realize very quickly that making conventional assumptions about leg/torso ratio gets quickly tossed out the window.
In fact, other variables are more important. They can include age, strength, comfortable body position on the bike, riding style, flexibility, range of movement, physical anomalies, etc. Any or all of these will trump gender when fitting a person comfortably on a bike.
We have always designed our bikes to be proportional in relation to geometry and component selection. We offer many bikes with sloping top tubes, because both men and women need top tube clearance, and the sloping design offers relative top tube lengths with shorter actual seat tubes.
But we also offer bikes with flat top tubes for a more traditional road profile.
We offer more sizes and more frame configurations for our road bikes than anyone else.
What that means is the frame handling is perfect for each frame size, and we don’t compromise geometry for marketing hype.
Because frame fit is the most important starting point, we design the frame to ride neutral at any given size. Our 44cm and 49cm Eros Donna have proportionally sized frame, handlebars, crank, stem and Selle Italia’s Lady Sudy saddle, but the bike fits some small men as well. We make eleven road and cross models starting at 44cm , and hope if you are either a man or a woman under 5’ 2”, you will take a test ride.
If our frame fits you, chances are the cranks and shifters are within the range. A stem and/or saddle change is entirely routine and easy to make. Saddles are like shoes. Just because it says “women’s saddle” doesn’t mean it will fit all women.
Are you less of a man if a “women’s” saddle happens to fit you best? I am a 5’7” woman and I ride a non-women’s saddle, wear a men’s size 40 Sidi shoe and use 42cm handlebars.
Because they fit, not because of a label.
By Sky Yaeger, Bianchi bicycle designer for 14 years, rider and racer since 1972.
Visit Bianchi for more information at: www.bianchiusa.com |
