Good Ideas Executed Poorly - Opinion

What do Rapid Rise and Dual Control have in common? Yes, they're both from the same drivetrain giant, and they're both long dead, but that's not what I'm getting at here; I could also include pedals with their bearings in the crank arms, those old THE Eliminator rims, and even downhill racers wearing skin suits on this list. The answer is that all of those things either never caught on or earned nearly universal disdain when they were released to the always (understandably) cynical riding public. Oh, and they also share something else: each one either had or has merit and real reasons to exist, too. Yeah, even Dual Control.

Why did it go down like that? You might say that it's because another common trait is that they're also shitty ideas, but I'm going to argue that while none of them were executed all that well in hindsight, the concepts behind each were all very sound.

One of the main reasons that none of those things stuck around, I believe, is that their benefits were either not widely understood, never explained in an easy to grasp way, or straight-up ignored. They had some issues, no doubt about it, but each one also had logical reasons to stick around... yet they went the way of bar-ends and URTs.


And we all know where pedal bearings belong, right? Certainly not in the pedals but rather the crankarms so they can be larger and more reliable, thereby allowing axles to be made larger and strong enough to withstand even the great Chris Glew case of Kranked 5. Even better, the axles could bugger off entirely if the bearings moved shop to the cranks. Variations have been made and tested, yet here we are with bearings from a freaking RC car - no joke - inside of our pedals. I believe that this is down to one of two things: either the crank and pedal people are ignoring it, or, kinda understandably, they're nervous to invest in a design that would call for a pretty noteworthy addition to the always crowded and widely derided ''new standard'' shark tank.

The concept makes way, way more sense than the crap we're using now, so one of you companies needs to man-up and get 'er done already.





Skin suits make sense. Pedal bearings becoming crank bearings make sense. Rapid Rise and Dual Control... make sense? You betcha they do, but these two received a mostly frosty response all around when debuted, at least partly because their advantages were never explained well enough for most of us to look past the glaringly obvious disadvantages.

I know more about knitting sweaters out of cat hair than I do about marketing, but given the often bewildering approach that some companies take when debuting a new product, not even a numbskull like me needs a crystal ball to predict the angry mob that forms mere seconds after the news breaks. Worse yet, sometimes the product in the line of fire truly does makes a lot of sense but the message was lost in translation or, even more worse, coated in slime when that's actually the last thing it needed.

Let's look at Rapid Rise first, the derailleur that everyone hated back in the 90s when it was first debuted, and then got to hate again with renewed vigor when it showed up in Shimano's high-end drivetrains in the early 2000s.




What's not to like about it? Well, it worked in reverse compared to everything else back then and still to this day; if you un-clamped the shift cable, the spring would force the derailleur up to the largest cog, which is the opposite of what the derailleur that's on your bike right now will do. The shift cable actually pulled it down to smaller cogs/higher gears which is, once again, the opposite of your derailleur. I understand the hate, I really do. If some all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipotent prankster decided that left is right and right is left, I'd be so f*cked given that it's taken me thirty-seven-years to learn that left is left and right is right. But back to shifting. Factor in steering and pedaling a bike, mud, rocks, roots, along with my newborn calf level of coordination, and there's a high probability that I'd lose my marbles over Rapid Rise if it forced was upon me tomorrow. The comment section would feel my all caps locked wrath, I tell you what.

But it's a damn good idea.

Shimano isn't stupid. Far from it, and, at least technically, Rapid Rise made loads of sense. Because the derailleur's spring wanted to pull it up to larger cogs/lower gears, shift action in this direction could be made smoother and with less effort, especially when asking for an easier gear under load on a steep climb like we're not supposed to do. That same spring could easily overcome your ratty, three-year-old contaminated shift housing, and the pulling of the cable to shift the opposite direction accomplished the same thing. Also, if your shift cable snapped, you'd be stuck in an easier gear rather than one that makes sense for land speed record attempt. Sign me up.

But you can't ask us to relearn how to shift, Shimano. You just can't. Aaaaaand they did exactly that, with predictable results. Rapid Rise, while making much more sense than David Icke's lizard people philosophy, probably had fewer riders who believed in it than people who believe that bipedal reptiles are currently running the world from beneath the Denver airport. Seriously. It also makes more sense than how our derailleurs work today, but a wholesale change in how we use our fingers was never going to fly with the riding public. The same goes for Dual Control, which was Shimano's idea to turn the brake lever into a dual-action shift lever. At the risk of being run off the line, this was also a really sound idea if you lean more towards fitness than flying through the air. And before you type out ''HAVE U USED THAT CRAP?!!!!' in the comment section, the answer is yes, a lot.




C'mon, Shimano, what'd you expect? I don't have a white belt in marketing, but even I know that there was little chance of Rapid Rise and (the complicated and expensive) Dual Control taking off, regardless of some advantages for certain styles of riding. In fact, it's probably one of the lesser reasons that SRAM got the foothold it did around this time - riders wanted a high-end drivetrain that operated how they were used to, and SRAM wisely chose to keep left as left and right as right.

So, the question is: where'd Shimano go wrong? The merits of both systems were steamrolled by hate, and therefore no one was about to re-learn how to operate their thumbs and pointer fingers in battle, understandably. Because change can be a real piss-off when it comes across as dogmatic and uncalled for, there shouldn't be any surprise to see how Rapid Rise's merits were quickly buried in hostility.




Mr. Henderson was about a decade ahead of his time with that idea, but the promise of improved reliability and being able to run lighter weight tires and tubes clearly wasn't lost on everyone - now we're doing the same thing by stuffing over-priced pieces of pool noodles inside our tires. It makes me wonder how Toby's rim would have panned out had the idea stuck around long enough to be refined properly.

Skinsuits on downhill racers, bearing-less pedals, Rapid Rise, Dual Control, and THE Eliminator rims are all ideas that, at least technically, make sense. I'll happily concede that some or none of those might not make one iota of sense to you right now, but the idea behind each is sound. Regardless, they were let down because they were either poorly explained (by the brands or the media, including us) or simply weren't refined enough to stick around.

Can you think of any other examples of products that, while maybe not being ready for prime time out of the gate, should have stuck around longer than they did?

Posted In:
Stories Mike Levy