For many road cyclists, the constant churn of standards can be a nightmare.
New road bike standards shoot up faster than Tadej Pogaçar on the Plateau de Beille, overcomplicating once simple tasks such as replacing headset or bottom bracket bearings, selecting tyres or adjusting your bike fit.
Innovations and the introduction of new ‘standards’ can make road bikes better. But too often, new standards don’t offer everyday riders meaningful performance improvements and only serve to frustrate.
The time has come, then, to put a stop to it all, and agree on a set of universal standards for road bikes, as dictated by me. Here, in no particular order, are my picks…
Hooked rims
Hookless rims – which lack the tyre bead hooks used to help retain clincher tyres under pressure – have proliferated in recent years.
Proponents of such rims, including Zipp, ENVE and Giant, claim they can be manufactured to consistent tolerances more cheaply and easily.
This is claimed to lead to improved performance and lower prices. So far, so good.
The downside is that hookless rims can only be used with tubeless tyres approved for use on hookless rims, and (aside from a few specific combinations) to a maximum inflation pressure of 72.5psi / 5 BAR.
It’s fair to say the compatibility woes have improved substantially since the early days of road hookless rims, with most new road bike tyres now offering hookless compatibility.
However, incidents such as Thomas De Gendt’s crash at the 2024 UAE Tour have proved doubts remain about their safety in the minds of some, with high-profile names such as Dan Bigham (head of engineering at Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) and Adam Hansen (president of the Professional Riders' Union) expressing concerns in the aftermath.
Whether those concerns are justified is hard to say – many here at BikeRadar have ridden (and continue to ride) hookless rims without trouble. But anecdotal evidence only counts for so much, of course.
Either way, it’s still unclear what riders have gained from the rise of hookless rims.
With bike prices skyrocketing in recent years, it certainly doesn’t feel as if road bike wheelsets have got noticeably cheaper as a result of hookless tech.
Comparing bike prices across the years is a complicated affair, of course, but carbon wheelsets remain an expensive upgrade, even at the lower end of the price scale.
Likewise, having ridden countless wheelsets since my first encounter with hookless rims on my Giant TCR Advanced Pro Disc long-term test bike back in 2020, I can say confidently there are no tangible performance benefits to hookless rims compared to hooked ones for road bikes.
They simply mean you have to pay much closer attention to which tyres and inflation pressures you use.
With hooked rims, you can use practically any tyres from any bike shop in the world, and pump them up to whatever pressure you like, all without putting yourself at risk of a catastrophic tyre blow-off.
Press-fit BB86 bottom brackets
Bottom brackets have been one of the worst offenders for new ‘standards’ in recent decades, but it’s made all the worse by the fact the solution has been staring the industry in the face since 2006.
That’s right, all brands must adopt Shimano’s BB86 standard – the best press-fit BB standard available.
Many people reading this will doubtless be shocked I’ve chosen a press-fit standard over a threaded one, but consider this – press-fit bottom brackets are better than threaded.
I’ve previously detailed why in an exhaustive feature linked above, but to summarise briefly – press-fit BBs are simpler, lighter and offer better tyre clearance than threaded bottom brackets.
Yes, they need to be done right to work properly, but that’s the case with everything. And if a bike brand can’t be relied upon to produce BB shells correctly, maybe it’s one we’re best off avoiding.
I understand home mechanics might be more comfortable with threaded BB tools.
Good tools for extracting and fitting BB86 bottom brackets are also astonishingly simple to use, though, and would naturally become more accessible as demand for them grew.
Hybrid cranks
When my colleague, Tom Marvin, wrote a version of this article about mountain bikes around five years ago, he nailed his flag to Shimano’s long-standing HollowTech II cranksets.
Unfortunately, though, Shimano cranksets have had a rough few years recently, with a global recall denting confidence in the system.
Of course, SRAM’s oversized DUB cranksets aren’t perfect either, often requiring a breaker bar or impact driver to remove (due to the use of aluminium fixing bolts that tend to seize in place).
Our best bet, then, is to take inspiration from both brands and create a universal crankset that marries perfectly with our BB86 bottom brackets.
From Shimano, we’ll keep the 24mm steel spindle. These are plenty light and stiff enough for everyone except Olympic track sprinters, and allow for decent-sized bearings in our bottom brackets
From SRAM, we’ll adopt the self-extracting crank design, but with a steel crank-arm bolt to avoid seizing.
Crank arms will be available in aluminium or carbon variants, to suit different budgets and builds, and will use interchangeable spiders for mounting chainrings of whatever bolt circle diameter you like.
This universal spider design will also help streamline the production of compatible power meters.
Universal thru-axles
Since the introduction of hydraulic disc brakes for road bikes, the industry has largely settled on 12x100mm front and 12x142mm rear spacing, using thru-axles to secure wheels to the dropouts, and that’s what we’ll keep from here on.
This offers plenty of hub width for building wheels with plenty of stiffness, while also being slim enough to prevent heel rub with relatively narrow road bike cranksets (which tend to have a narrower Q-Factor than gravel or MTB ones).
A move to a standardised thru-axle length and thread pitch of M12 x 1.5mm, however, will give a good balance between installation and removal speed, durability and the amount of torque required to secure the axles.
A standardised head design – which will be slotted for a 5mm Allen key – will ensure any 12x100mm front and 12x142mm rear thru-axle can be used on any road bike frameset with disc brakes. No more proprietary designs.
Yes to UDH
Why the bike industry thought it would be a good idea to have a unique derailleur-hanger design for every single bike model (and often model year!) is beyond me, but it’s time to draw a line in the sand.
From here on, all road bikes must do as my colleague, Warren Rossiter, recently suggested and adopt SRAM’s Universal Derailleur Hanger (UDH) design.
If patents are anything to go by, Shimano may launch its own direct-mount derailleur design, but sorry Shimano – you’re far too late to the party with this one already. It’s time to accept that SRAM got this one right.
There are no performance advantages to be gained from the tiny variations in current derailleur hanger shapes and sizes, so let’s just be done with them.
It would also help shops reduce unnecessary inventory and avoid confusion.
As with thru-axles, riders should be able to walk into any bike shop, or browse any online store, and quickly locate a replacement derailleur hanger for their bikes with minimal fuss.
A unified design should also mean such replacement hangers aren’t overly expensive, or – perhaps more importantly – difficult to find long after a frame itself has ceased production.
And don’t worry, moving to UDH wouldn’t make existing rear derailleurs obsolete. A UDH frame can take direct-mount rear derailleurs, such as SRAM’s Red XPLR AXS, but can also be used with a standard derailleur hanger for practically every other modern derailleur in existence.
HG freehubs only and no 10t cogs
Freehubs are another area that have seen lots of ‘innovation’ in recent years, especially with the rise of 10t and smaller cogs.
Yet, while having to change a freehub often isn’t an overly difficult task, it does – as with many other things I’ve mentioned so far – often strike me as an unnecessary chore.
The simplicity and durability of a steel Shimano Hyperglide freehub make it the obvious choice for road bikes.
It is – or at least was – a ubiquitous, settled standard, and, as with derailleur hangers or thru-axles, would mean an end to annoying compatibility questions.
Aluminium freehubs may be fractionally lighter, but the increased potential for ‘cassette bite’ (the tendency for steel cassette sprockets to dig into a relatively soft aluminium freehub body and damage it) makes it a false economy.
HG freehubs mean sticking to 11t smallest sprockets, but that’s also for the best.
10t and smaller sprockets, and the smaller chainrings they’re designed to be paired with, are less mechanically efficient than larger ones.
This means you’ll ride fractionally slower for the same effort and, all else being equal, your parts are likely to wear out faster.
Smaller sprockets and chainrings may save a few grams of weight overall, but – again – the pros don’t outweigh the cons.
This is why the pros almost always opt for bigger chainrings than SRAM offers as standard on bikes for everyday riders.
In my experience, it’s perfectly possible to get all the gearing range you need on a road bike – both at the high and low end – with cassettes starting at 11t. Especially if you stick to superior 2x drivetrains, instead of 1x systems.
We can keep SRAM XD/XDR and Shimano Microspline freehubs for mountain and gravel bikes (although preferably there’d be one universal standard for those bikes too), where 1x drivetrains make more sense, but for road, they’re another unnecessary complication.
Universal 12-speed chains
While we’re on the subject of drivetrains, why do we suddenly have all these different chain standards nowadays?
Back in the 9-, 10- and 11-speed eras, you could use practically any chain on any chainring or cassette, provided it was the correct ‘speed’.
This also meant you could easily mix a SRAM cassette with a Shimano drivetrain, or vice versa, without issues.
Now, with myriad chain designs from the big three road bike groupset manufacturers – as well as cassettes and chainrings with matching tooth profiles – it’s a bit of a mess.
SRAM, for example, overhauled everything when it created its 12-speed AXS road and gravel groupsets, with the Flattop chain design (and matching AXS cassettes and chainrings) diverging from the rest of the market, and creating an essentially closed ecosystem of parts.
Shimano and Campagnolo’s 12-speed ecosystems are closer matches, but reports from the likes of Zero Friction Cycling suggest there are issues with compatibility there too.
Annoyingly, this means we can’t easily mix and match drivetrain parts from different brands anymore – at least not without painstaking research into whether any given combination will work correctly.
If all 12-speed chains used the same basic design – let’s pick Shimano’s Hyperglide+ given it’s the most ubiquitous and has been well-proven over many years – we could dispense with yet another layer of annoying compatibility issues.
1-1/8" steerers and solid lube headset bearings
I’d love to pick a single universal system for this, but we’re in the middle of a hurricane of front-end ‘standards’ at the moment.
As with bottom brackets, it may be a few years before the dust settles and we can decide which internal cable routing system is the best one.
In the meantime, though, we can at least lay down some minimum requirements.
For a start, all road bikes must use a steerer tube compatible with a standard, non-integrated 1-1/8” stem.
Sorry Giant, but your 1-1/4” OverDrive 2 system is out, as is the Scott 1” steerer. Canyon’s proprietary quill stem-style system is definitely banned too.
Brands can keep making fully integrated cockpits, because clearly many roadies want those nowadays, but riders must retain the option to default to a basic non-integrated stem if they wish.
Likewise, all road bikes specced with fully integrated front ends must use bearings with solid lubricants in them (such as SKF MTRX or CeramicSpeed SLT bearings) to resist contamination and extend service intervals.
Is that enough?
While I could keep going (and going), I won’t.
Before we wrap this up, though, it’s worth making the point that I’m not against innovations or new ‘standards’ in principle.
The problem is that ‘new’ doesn’t always equal ‘better’. As Tom pleaded in his picks for MTB standards almost five years ago, it would be great if brands could more frequently consider whether the benefits of creating a new ‘standard’ outweigh the potential downsides for end users, or not.
I appreciate brands need the freedom to try stuff out, though, and if some ideas have to fall by the wayside as technology moves forward, maybe that’s a price we all have to pay for progress.
It’s worth remembering that we can always vote with our wallets and avoid buying into technologies and systems we don’t like, too. No one needs to be a guinea pig for new tech if they don’t want to be (I’m very happy with my non-integrated 2020 Giant TCR, thanks very much).
After all, if things don’t sell, brands won’t keep making them.
Now, though, I want to hear from you – what picks did I get wrong, and what standards would you have in their place?
Also, are there any other road bike components you’d like to see standardised? Let me know in the comments below.
