Something old, something new, something borrowed, something red, white, and blue

Nerd Alert Podcast

Track events at the Tokyo Olympics are set to kick off next week with a full week of exciting racing around the 250-meter Izu velodrome.

Felt is once again the official bike sponsor of the US team, and the company has supplied a brand-new bike — the TK FRD — for mass-start events that features a new aero shape and a new take on the frame geometry. But for the individual events, the American riders are on the same bike as they used in Rio five years ago.

In an event where fractions of a second can have major impacts, and when several other federations have brought radically cutting-edge machines to Tokyo, how is it that the Americans are using bikes that are half a decade old? Then again, maybe all isn’t as it seems.