Single Speed Freewheeled / Fixed Gear Bike History

Single Speed Freewheeled / Fixed Gear Bike History 

Until 1937, when they were first permitted to use derailleur gears, those giants of men who competed in the Tour de France – and in all other races up to a similar year – rode bikes with just a single gear, that's 34 years from the start of the tour in 1903. Initially, in the case of the Tour until about 1906, they were not permitted to use freewheels, thus rode fixed-gear or fixed-wheel. Whenever the rear wheel was rotating, so the pedals were rotating too. The advent of the freewheel at least allowed the rider some respite from constant pedaling, and helped average speeds increase. However many races were won at very respectable speeds despite the absence of derailleur gears: most riders mounted sprockets of different size on each side of the rear wheel, and could thus change gear by removing the wheel and flipping it over to use the other gear. Later some put double sprockets on one or both sides, and changed gear by manually shifting the chain from one to another. The Tour de France of 1936 was done with a single gear and freewheel with the winner maintaining a 19.3mph average speed, the following year of the tour was the year in which they allowed the use of a derailleur setup and the winner maintained an average speed of 19.7mph both tours were 2700+miles long and had similar mountain stages.

There are plenty of good reasons for still riding single-speed bikes. They are much simpler, cheaper, and can easily be as light as much more expensive geared bikes. Moreover they are excellent for training, as you have a simple choice: pedal in the single gear, or walk! You cannot progressively chicken out on a hill and crawl your way down to 'granny' gear. Because of this the rider is forced to be an aggressive rider to maintain momentum, giving the rider a great core body workout when climbing hills. When traveling at higher speeds, you must learn to pedal smoothly at very high cadences of 120 per minute or more, and this builds what is termed souplesse in your pedaling style. Traditional European training methods for pro cyclists normally put them back on a fixed-wheel or single-speed bike when they returned to training in the New Year, and used that to increase burst leg strength and improve souplesse before switching back to a normal road bike after 1000 to 2000 miles. Being so simple, single-speed bikes are ideal for bad weather training, as they can be cleaned and maintained very quickly. Some pros still recommend single-speed or fixed-wheel bikes for certain types of event, notably hill-climbs, although no-one would attempt more general or multi-stage road racing on such a machine now.