Dura Ace 9000 chainset on a track bike

[jay cee]

it looks to work. The chainline for hollowtech 2 used to be terrible. just thought I would share.

[TurboKoo]

I think Jens Voigt started this but he had custom rear cog to correct chainline.

[jay cee]

I wish I had looked closer at Viviani's bike.

[jay cee]

interesting he didn't use it at the olympics

[11.4]

There's a trend for world record attempts and for some endurance events to use modified road bikes. It's probably fair to say that road bikes have evolved superior aero properties and stiffness than track bikes, and absolutely true when a rider is limited to his sponsors' bikes, as in the case of Viviani with Pinarello. Or Wiggins. And so on.

These modified bikes have the rear stay end alignment customized to fit whatever crankset and wheels they want to use, and in many cases have custom hubs offering narrower than normal width for aero benefits. To do this, traditional track cranks wouldn't even work well, and the bottom brackets are often narrower even on the modified road frames. So this is not an unexpected sight, but it doesn't mean it's easy to take an off-the-shelf track bike and install current Shimano road cranks and have it work properly.