how short a stem is too short?

[VeloVT]

Let's keep in mind that men tend to have longer torsos and shorter inseams by proportion compared to women. So maybe by comparison, their reach tends to be longer than women's. Plus, in general most women are smaller than men (although the average height for men is shrinking....the Europeans are getting taller and Americans are getting shorter....on average).

The difference in relative body dimensions isn't what I'm getting at -- it's not really relevant to the question I'm asking. Pros have access to just about everything they could want (pro teams are how bike companies do R&D). They are not running super long stems because they can't get bikes that would fit them with a shorter stem -- for some reason they are electing to ride small bikes with long stems instead of medium bikes with medium stems (or whatever the equivalent of that equation is based on how tall they actually are).

Us ordinary mortals tend to be advised that longer stems will cause adverse changes in handling -- so we are advised to go medium frame/medium stem -- but since pro riders make their livelihood by riding bikes, I don't think they'd be electing to ride extreme tt/stem combos if, first, there weren't some significant benefit to doing so, and second, if there were adverse handling changes that were at all significant -- they are putting much higher handling demands on their bikes than most of us (high speed winding descents, etc), so I don't think they'd be likely to *settle* on that.

So what's the truth? That's what I want to know . It seems like we get a mixed message from the "conventional wisdom"...



Oakleaf: interesting questions...