531colin wrote:The design of the frame in question is actually pushing the rider towards a short stem. If he makes the effort to get the bike to fit, he will need a big layback on the seatpost, and then a short stem to normalise the reach.
This formed part of my objection. The only time you would add a
longer stem when you use a steeper seat angle is if you genuinely wanted a more forward seat position than you normally used and were shifting your whole position forward by X amount, so you would maintain your normal reach to the bars. A pro cyclist might do this for a very particular purpose, e.g. a short, flat stage with good roads, where the riding style was approaching TT type riding.
Conversely, and this is getting tangential, some pros move their whole position
back by X amount, for cobbled stages or stages with bad roads, to relieve weight on hands on bumpy surfaces.
Having the saddle further forward seems to mean shorter cranks are needed for some riders too - rather than bringing your knees up a bit more in front of you have to bring them up into you, which means at the limits of knee and hip bending, it can be harder to get over the top of the cranks, particularly if you don't have excellent ankle dorsiflexion. Now there's nothing wrong with shorter cranks for other reasons, but having them forced on you by extreme positioning seems wrong.
Basically - you can change materials, add thru-axles, tubeless tyres and so on but I'd say there's a reason that most common aspects of design are common.