Cyrille Guimard is the French darling of directeurs sportifs and I believe is universally known as one of the best the sport has ever seen. He’s been a commentator on French radio and television for years now and, like most people in their retirement years, doesn’t give a crap what you think.

Below is an extract in English from an article I just read from Top Vélo. Since I’m still riding rim brakes and have always had my reservations about changing, I thought I’d share it, for what it’s worth. Run the article through Google Translate (if needed) to see what he says about ear pieces as well – to me he makes some sense.

The marketing imperatives are obvious. Overnight, the major manufacturers and the most important equipment suppliers imposed disc brakes on the peloton, which was neither useful nor serious. Disc brakes are interesting and not very dangerous in mountain biking where there is never a peloton of 200 riders going at 60 km/h. We talked for a while about the dangers it represented for riders. Particularly cuts in the event of a complex fall. But we forgot to talk about their excessive power and the risks it creates by offering riders the possibility of braking later and more suddenly. To the detriment of the stability of the machine and the grip of the tires. Why do you think the width of tires has been increased excessively? But faced with the omnipotence of marketing and financial interests, security and technical logic take second place. Thanks to the adoption of disc brakes, hundreds of thousands of cyclists have been forced to completely change equipment with obvious economic benefits for the industry.

Bonus points for anyone who can identify these good ol’ boys.