Disc brakes are slowly overtaking the world of competitive road racing, but the change is not without concerns, the biggest of which is the rotor — will it slice cyclists apart when they crash on it?

At Paris-Roubaix in 2016, Movistar’s Fran Ventoso claimed that a large cut on his lower leg was caused by a disc rotor used by the Roompot team. Team Sky’s Owain Doull says his left shoe was sliced clean through by a disc brake rotor in a crash at the end of stage 1 in the 2017 Abu Dhabi Tour. The video from the latter incident seems to indicate a rotor was not to blame.

So, we took it upon ourselves to conduct a definitely not scientific experiment to get an idea of how real the fears are. Will disc brake rotors cut shoes? Leather? Cardboard? Watch as we channel our inner “MythBusters” in the VeloNews workshop.

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