I'm still agnostic on tubeless tyres for road bikes – are they better or just different?

I wrote a column a couple of weeks ago about tyres. It was a sort of I-remember-the-bad-old-days piece about how much tyres have improved over the years. I stand by this opinion. But it triggered a different thought.

We need to talk about where we are with tubeless tyres. Two weeks ago I described a sort of, “bad… better… better… good!” trajectory on tyre performance. I missed out the final “… Uh? You want me to do what exactly?” that tubeless brought about.

Michael Hutchinson

Multiple national champion on the bike and award-winning author Michael Hutchinson writes for Cycling Weekly every week.

The most immediate effect of the rise of tubeless tyres was to give me the feeling of being a luddite, the sort of sensation that must have been familiar to anyone in the 1880s who bought a new penny-farthing only to have every cycling magazine suddenly pivot on the spot and start extolling the virtues of the new, chain-driven safety bike.

For every change in cycling tech, there is an equal and opposite push-back from people used to the old ways. This is usually sorted out via a low-level attritional battle, with the manufacturers and people under the age of 30 on one side, and everyone else on the other. That goes on until a few years later, when the youngsters and the bike makers win, because who can stand in the way of youth and profit?

But none of this really addresses a fundamental problem. Is the new thing better, or just different? Electronic gears have effectively displaced mechanical. They work a little better. But add in weight, reliability, repairability and cost and what you have is a product that is in a

lot of other respects harder to live with. I know one bike company exec who seven or eight years ago described the change as, “a great leap sideways.”

But back to tubeless. It is undeniably great on mountain bikes and gravel bikes. On road bikes it’s still a trade-off. Most small punctures fix themselves, and that’s jolly nice. Big punctures become a full production number, often involving friends, clubmates, hastily summoned family members and local taxi firms, as well as far more latex-y goo than could possibly fit inside a tyre.

Then there are the punctures that you do seal on the roadside, but only by gently swashing the sealant back and forth over the leak, letting it dry, repeating the process, pumping the tyre gingerly up to 35 psi waiting for a spluttering fart of sealant and escaping air and all the time murmuring like a mantra, “This is better than an inner tube, this is better than an inner tube,” because if you don’t you’ll scream.

And some effects are, if not especially inconvenient, just a bit odd, like punctures that come and go. Every day for a week you have to pump a tyre all the way up from 30 psi, then at the weekend it’s suddenly fine, but on Monday it’s started going soft again.

As an agnostic, I’ve enjoyed the number of articles that have quietly begun appearing on magazine websites called something like, “How to swap your tubeless set-up back to tubes!” They come from the same outlets that ran the opposite article a couple of years ago. They have advice on how to remove all the sealant so you can re-use the tyre. They don’t quite try to sell you tubes as a thrilling new innovation, but you can tell that every instinct they have wants to.

I’m still undecided. I’m sorting out my winter bike, and it’s got tubes and will continue to do so. I’ll take that side of the bargain – I’ll be five minutes late once a month, rather than two days late once a year.

Of course, by my third slow puncture of the do-I-change-the-tube-or-just-pump-it-up-fast-and-ride-like-hell variety, I might change my mind again.

Great Inventions of Cycling - the pointless debate

The pointless debate was more or less the first thing anyone invented after the dandy-horse, the precursor to the bicycle. The argument then was whether the dandy-horse frame, made of wood, should or shouldn’t have a horse’s head carved into the front of it.

The joy of the pointless debate is that it can never end. Is Eddy Merckx greater than Tadej Pogačar? Is whichever one of them is greater, greater in their turn than Fausto Coppi? Is sprinting harder than climbing? Is time trialling more or less interesting than a five-hour flat race?

The impossibility of a definitve answer is, obviously, crucial to the certainty with which competing viewpoints are promoted. Is GT85 a superior product to WD40? Should you use both? Should you use neither? There are clubs whose entire social calendar for the last fifty years has revolved exclusively around this question, and if someone ever produced an actual answer they’d have to dissolve the club.

The happy upshot of the pointless debate is that there are riding buddies and clubs who have for many years successfully avoided anything approaching a personal conversation. It’s not unusual to know someone for years and be fully up to speed on their views on the best material for an inner-tube and the one true brand of Belgian beer, but have no idea if they’re married or what they do for a living.

The pointless debate is what makes cycling what it is. And if you want to argue with me, I’m listening. But you’re wrong.