'I’m too good a rider to tell one bike from another': Why our columnist will never write a good bike review

I have recently had the good fortune to have the opportunity to hand over some money in exchange for a bicycle. You’ll appreciate that I resent the transactional nature of this. Like St. Francis of Cycling, I feel the bicycles should come to me of their own accord. 

Michael Hutchinson

Michael Hutchinson is a writer, journalist and former professional cyclist. His Dr Hutch columns appears in every issue of Cycling Weekly magazine.

A week or two after the bike arrived, the friend who ransomed it to me asked me what I thought of it. And I hate it when this happens. When the conversation turns to the characteristics of bikes, I feel like a man getting drunk as fast as possible in grim silence while surrounded by people swilling wine around their mouths and saying, “I’m getting grass, peaches, and a hint of WD40.”

Every time I read a professional bike review I am impressed at the ability some riders have to feel the details, work out what it is they like or don’t like, and write it down. I have friends who can do it – one of them has the ability to distinguish between different spoke patterns by ride feel, and can’t understand why everyone can’t do this.

Of course, it helps that as a rider he’s as weak as a kitten. I have a theory that pro riders and ex-pro riders make terrible bike reviewers, for two reasons. The first is a career of riding what they’re given and liking it because they’re being paid to. How much would you like a bike that came with an annual salary? You’d like it a lot.

The second is that pros can push out huge powers. If you can ride at 400 watts, telling the difference between two different inner tubes is going to be a challenge. If you can only do 200 watts, it’s obviously twice as easy. It’s just maths.

So to some extent my justification for my inability to tell one bike from another by anything more subtle than its colour is that I’m too good a rider. I’ll be entering this claim in the world humble-brag championships in the autumn. (“I won for the third year running; I guess anyone can get lucky.”)

But I’ve tried. Objectively I know my new bike is light, because I can measure that, and I’ve had the chance to put it in a wind tunnel, so I know it’s fast. I’ve ridden around my local roads concentrating on the compliant ride, the excellent wheels, its eagerness to accelerate, its obvious desire to be ridden fast, and many other things I’ve been told about it. As with tasting a glass of wine, I can sense enough to agree with an articulate opinion, or at least as much of the opinion as makes any actual sense.

There is a side effect. When I got my old bike out to ride on a damp day, I found I was reviewing it too. “On the test bike, the brake levers were at different heights, and the bar tape had clearly been in an accident. The brake rotors were kind of poppadum shaped. I found that if I whacked 400 watts through it, it went quite fast, although when I did so it made a noise like a bag of tools being thrown down some stairs.”

Reviewer brain then starts at other things. “This coffee machine makes excellent coffee,” I remarked to Mrs. Doc, “but I think the steam wand doesn’t have enough holes in the end. It has three. It would be better with four.” I complained that the noise of the vacuum cleaner was too high pitched, and that the on-switch was the wrong shade of red.

Over our evening meal I innocently commented that the risotto was a touch dry. Mrs. Doc said nothing. I looked across the table at her. A long, slow look. “Is your hair…” was as far as I got, but it was already too late.