Or perhaps the better question: what are the most important considerations when it comes to person-specific bike fit, regardless of gender?
And the question I wish more people were asking: what has an increased focus on fitting bikes for women taught us about bike set up for, well, everyone?
Having worked in cycling media for over ten years, and often tasked with reviewing bikes aimed at a female market, I’ve heard the ‘women’s-specific’ debate from many angles. Where it gets most confusing for consumers is that a large number of early designs for women were (in hindsight) a load of bollocks. More recently, most of the companies that invested heavily in well-researched designs for female riders such as Trek, Specialized and Scott, seem to have back-flipped and have returned to gender-neutral designs, particularly at the racier end of the spectrum. Reducing the marketing for these changes to single, snappy sentences seems to confuse consumers even further.Continue reading “Do I need a women’s specific bike?”