As title… long, steep, twisty descent and a heavyish rider (13/14st); what will more safely/confidently slow you down?

I’ve just been hearing tales of rim heat induced high speed front wheel punctures at the Etape, but of course smaller discs can fade in the heat.

Observations gratefully received.

Both will fail if you use them like a nobber.

cable discs are the safest

Oh dear

Do you have a link to this outbreak of blowing tyres?

Well recorded incidents of riders blowing up (latex) inner tubes with clincher carbon rims due to dragging their rim brakes – many manufacturers specifically state to not use latex tubes on clinchers. If you want carbon rims, go for discs. If you want to run rim brakes and clinchers, then tubeless or tubulars is the answer, but braking will never be as good an an alloy or disc rim. Never heard of a problem with exploding inners and alloy rims. I was running discs on a road bike in 2002.

Discs will rip your head off if you look at them in a funny way. Lethal. Terrifying.

Someone should ban them, really.

On a serious note mate exploded a front tyre and tube in a sportive and ended up with ten broken ribs and a long hospital stay. Does happen.

Discs have risk of heat fade though I guess.

Discs have risk of heat fade though I guess.

not cable…

I heard about 4 punctures while descending Col de la Colombiere on the Etape. It was really hot by that point and a lot of people were dragging brakes simply because of the traffic and the other crashes they’d seen.

I did initially wonder if it was tacks on the road or something before realising it was the heat. Never seen it happen before.

Discs would have been fantastic on that parcours.