The Great, Forgotten Science Fiction Relic

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As a parent and an American, I have had to make all kinds of important decisions in the election year of 2024. The most difficult and most important thing was which bike to bring with me on my summer vacation.

Every year at the end of August, my family and I go to the Adirondack Park in upstate New York; The cycling terrain here includes paved climbs, gravel roads, and rocky paths lost deep into the wilderness. Every spring I begin to seriously consider which bike will have the privilege of accompanying me. The optimal choice is usually a rig with a wide range of both tire and gearing, and past standouts have worked best for me. Rivendell A. Homer Hilsen and me Jones LWB.

I thought I’d probably bring one of these two bikes again this year, but made a strange and potentially crazy decision at the last second. Like George Costanza buying an ’89 Chrysler LeBaron because it once belonged to him Midnight Cowboy After star Jon Voigt, I opted for the 1998 Trek Y-Foil 77 that was loaned to me. Classic Loop collection, a historic bicycle museum and store located in Washington.

Like the LeBaron, the Y-Foil 77 was a dubious model for which it was famous. supposed It once belonged to the late writer and jovial George Plimpton.

It may seem like a long shot, but the Classical Cycle is also sent a letter of authenticity “prove” that you belong Paper Tiger writer. Who am I to argue?

As a rider with traditional (some might say old fashioned) tastes who like regular diamond shaped frames made of metal One of cycling media’s most outspoken critics of carbon fiber hegemonyI’ve always found the Y-Foil ridiculously weird. It was hard to imagine riding that thing, let alone liking it. It looked more like a triathlon bike than a road bike, which was…um. But the more I drove it, the more I began to appreciate it.

Of course, the bike only holds one water bottle at a time, and yes, the gap where the seat tube should be makes it look like a device built for punching holes in giant wheels of cheese. (The unorthodox frame design also ensures you get every last bit of road spray in case it rains.) But I rarely carry more than one bottle anyway. Despite its crazy looks, it provides the handling of any well-designed road bike, plus the beam design of the frame provides very little suspension, making the ride surprisingly smooth and comfortable.

Trek sold the Y-Foil for only two years in 1998 and 1999, and since then the bike has gained a cult following; While this is partly because they’re rare and some people think they look cool, it’s also because of the aforementioned smooth ride quality, which is unusual for a road bike that only clears a 25mm tyre. I had never been a member of the Y-Foil cult and therefore knew little about the bike’s history, other than vaguely remembering the design being banned from competition.

So I started reading about their history and was surprised to learn that it wasn’t just a triathlon bike, but was designed with Paris-Roubaix and cobblestone classics in mind, and early versions even had suspension. fork fixed. This explained the frame’s compressed-looking front end, as well as the elongated fork crown, which Classic Cycle’s Paul Johnson likened to high-waisted jeans.

The revelation that the Y-Foil was designed for the cobblestones of Europe, not triathlons, was almost harder to believe than the George Plimpton incident. So I reached out to Trek to find out for sure, who connected me with retired engineer Jim Colegrove, who worked at Y-Foil.

Colegrove told me that in the nineties, cyclists (or at least bicycle companies) had a love affair with cycling. beam bikes. Trek was also having a lot of success Y-frame mountain bikes. So the idea behind the Y-Foil was to take the design to the road and take advantage of the main beam.

As Colegrove and the team at Trek see it, when it comes to road-focused beam bikes, Zipp’s The 2001 model was the one to beat, but they also felt it had three fatal flaws: lateral drift (which they called “sway”); bob (feeling like you’re sitting on a trampoline); and weight (Zipp was quite heavy). So Trek set out to design a Y-frame road bike that wouldn’t have any of these problems. At the same time, they saw an opportunity to start a company. Rock Shox suspension road forkThe people at Trek were convinced that it “was going to be a thing,” as Colegrove puts it.

Not everyone on the team agreed, and of course suspension forks on road bikes didn’t matter (at least until gravel formed). Yet the 1992, 1993 and 1994 editions of Paris-Roubaix were all won with Rock Shox forks. Trek planned to offer its new Y-frame road bike to pro teams, so the suspension fork was added to the bike. (Or at least the suspension fork compatibility did. Colegrove doesn’t know if anyone has used a suspension fork on a Y-Foil, and I’ve certainly never seen a soft Y-Foil either in nature or on the internet.)

Unfortunately, just as Trek introduced the Y-Foil, the Union Cycliste Internationale, cycling’s governing body, decided that road bike frames “must be of a conventional pattern, i.e. built around a main triangle.” This rule meant that professionals could not ride the Y-Foil in any races under the auspices of the UCI; This refers to all races that are important to people when deciding which expensive road bike to buy.

Colegrove wonders whether the UCI might have specifically made this rule to block Trek (see what I did there?) to protect unsuspecting European bike manufacturers from a big, bad American company capable of producing futuristic aero bikes at scale. . However, it is worth noting that the decision also affects European bicycles. Colnago Bititan with twin outlet pipesMaybe they really wanted to continue the tradition and save us all from the nightmarish, completely horizontal future of professional cycling.

Of course, there was nothing stopping you from buying a Y-Foil to compete in a triathlon, or getting your local USA Cycling sanctioned criterium, or just using it for fun and enjoying the head-turning looks and aero benefits. (Wind tunnel results showed the Y-Foil was “significantly” more aerodynamic than a conventional frame, according to Colegrove.) But that’s not how the cycling industry works, and the Tour de France had limited appeal because the Y-Foil could never be seen as a winner and It turned into a “black hole,” as Colgrove put it.

Despite the aero factor, it wasn’t a true triathlon bike and it didn’t have a professional cycling background. Although the bike was in production, the last year it appeared in the Trek catalog was 1999; the same year Lance Armstrong won the first Tour de France on a standard Trek 5500 with a diamond frame.

25 years later, all of this adds a certain feel to the bike, and since I enjoy it so much more than I thought I would, I thought I’d bring it with me on holiday as a consolation prize of sorts. Just across Lake Champlain in New York State lies Vermont, where the bike can finally get a taste of the terrain for which it was designed, but criss-crossed with gravel roads that few Y-Foil have ever experienced.

Road cyclists have recently adopted wider tires. As cyclists tackle roads with rougher surfaces, 25-millimeter tires, the widest the Y-Foil allows, are now considered too narrow.

However, I got through the toughest sections without wearing out or flattening, and otherwise the bike was not only competent but smooth; The beam offered enough flexibility to allow me to comfortably transfer my weight to the rear wheel. After successfully traversing the gravel roads of Vermont, I took the ferry to Ticonderoga, NY.

Ticonderoga is full of history and the things that make this country great. There is a name castleanonymous pen (they weren’t made there but that’s where Graphite used to come) and there Star Trek Original Series Set TourA place that attracts Trekkies from all over the galaxy.

At no point in our conversation did Colegrove mention the Starfleet Emblem as an inspiration for the Y-Foil’s design, but I have to wonder if perhaps it had subconsciously crept in there.

If you’re a fan of technical innovation, you might think we lost when the UCI banned Y-Foil bikes, and if you’re a traditionalist you might think we probably dodged a bullet. I definitely consider myself a traditionalist. But above all, I am also a cycling enthusiast. I can now appreciate and enjoy this relic, safe in the knowledge that there is no threat to the supremacy of my beloved diamond frame.

Y-Foil may not have been a commercial success, but Trek accomplished what it set out to do; The goal was to design a Y-shaped bike that performed like a good road bike should, without wobble, wobble or excessive weight. I enjoyed every trip with it during my summer vacation and I don’t think I missed anything by choosing it… except maybe the second water bottle.