Do Flat Pedals Win Medals? | Clips Vs. Flats 7

In light of Sam Hill's recent performances aboard his signature flat pedal set up amongst the best riders in the world all using clips we decide to revisit our clips vs flats test with a steep edition...

Clips Vs. Flats is a very old argument with both having their pro and cons on different lengths of riding and types of terrain... How will they fair on what Scott says is the steepest EWS stage he's ever ridden...?

Credit: GMBN
Related:
Clipless Pedals
Clipless Shoes
Flat Pedal Shoes
Flat Pedals
Enduro
7 comments

View replies to: Do Flat Pedals Win Medals? | Clips Vs. Flats

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Johan_Norberg
8 years ago
Well if your name is Sam Hill flat pedals win medals, otherwise not so much. He is to my knowledge the only person ever to be remotely consistent top finisher on flats.
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KiloMike
8 years ago
not trying to argue, but there have been a few that deserve mention. Mickael Pascal, an old Dirt Mag article described him as one of the most consistent top 10 riders over a very long period of time always on Atom Lab flats with huge pins. Martin Maes raced flats his first Enduro season or so. Oh and Kovarik, largest WC DH margin of victory ever. And Fearon has been doing pretty well too. We forget that last year he was 2nd to Gwin on 26" wheels at Leogang. If if Gwin hadn't blown our minds without pedaling, which he did, the forums would have exploded about 26" and flat pedals. I wish Blinky and Bulldog would go back to flats too, they had more podiums when they did.
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TEAMROBOT
8 years ago
Yeah, no one has finished on the podium consistently on flats except for Sam Hill... and Kovarik, Rennie, Blenkinsop, Smith, MacDonald, Cullinan, Palmer, Pascal. And Gwin got all his first podiums on flats. And that time Gee won on flats. Other than that, no one.
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Johan_Norberg
8 years ago
Well how many Champs medals or WC overalls did they get between them (besides Sam), do they cover Minnarr and Vouilloz together? Nope. Sure some make a few nice hits when they get on a roll but even from that list a few ditched the flats for clips. Are flats viable to contend with, absolutely but clips make you able to ride far more consistently at the cost of a very small time defecit. Overall, flats is higher variance in your riding, clips is less. And flats only really offer an advantage when it gets really nasty and you know that you are almost 100% sure that you will need to dab, otherwise when you never take your foot of the pedal they offer no advantage.

But I guess we differ in opinion on what consistently means. Is it being on the podium 2-3 times over
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JVP
8 years ago
Sample size of 1 per run. Worthless. I'd imagine your second run will usually be faster than your first.
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Triber66
8 years ago
Concrete evidence of flats superiority? No. But it does at show that they didn't hold him back. I think that would surprise a lot of people.
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