Has anybody heard of any actual enforcement of the UCI's new wheel regulations?
For those not familiar with the rule, it's on the UCI website. Basically, wheels with less than 20 spokes, or with carbon spokes or rims, are banned unless they've passed an "break test". The impact test essentially involves subjecting the wheel to an impact sufficient to break it, and ensuring it doesn't imitate the R-SYS.
The upshot is that a huge fraction of the carbon wheels out there on the market are banned until and if the vendors bother to pass the "break test" (assuming they will do so). The list of approved wheels is here. Presumably, the same applies to handbuilt wheels made from carbon rims, and it's hard to see how custom wheel builders can feasibly meet such a regulation.
In practice, I certainly haven't seen anybody checking wheels at the local crits, and as I understand it placegetters at national-level events in Australia have been seen using wheels not on the list without any sanction.
So I come back to my original question - is this rule being enforced anywhere beyond the European pro peloton? Is it likely to be?
For those not familiar with the rule, it's on the UCI website. Basically, wheels with less than 20 spokes, or with carbon spokes or rims, are banned unless they've passed an "break test". The impact test essentially involves subjecting the wheel to an impact sufficient to break it, and ensuring it doesn't imitate the R-SYS.
The upshot is that a huge fraction of the carbon wheels out there on the market are banned until and if the vendors bother to pass the "break test" (assuming they will do so). The list of approved wheels is here. Presumably, the same applies to handbuilt wheels made from carbon rims, and it's hard to see how custom wheel builders can feasibly meet such a regulation.
In practice, I certainly haven't seen anybody checking wheels at the local crits, and as I understand it placegetters at national-level events in Australia have been seen using wheels not on the list without any sanction.
So I come back to my original question - is this rule being enforced anywhere beyond the European pro peloton? Is it likely to be?