On the other hand it would be incredible fun to ride a fake Cervelo or Dogma and be faster than rich dentists on their 12k Pinarellos. Who's laughing now b*tch?
I read comments like this a lot, smells like insecurity to me!
Ever since getting into bikes (I'm 50 and have ridden bicycles my whole life) there's always been a few people (both men and now women) in my group of cycling friends who are stronger than me and it's never bothered me (it is what it is?!).
One guy in particular is way stronger than me and most likely always will be. He's got 20+ bikes and all of them are old rim brake bikes between $1-2K AUD. He did have a go at me when I bought my $20K AUD S-Works SL8 Tarmac, and went as far as saying that "it's not about the bike, it's about the rider". I just about had enough of his negative attitude towards my choice of buying an expensive bike that I forced him to swap shoes with me at the cafe (we run different pedals) and insisted that he have a go.
He was literally blown away. So much so that he put an order in for a TanTan SL8 copy.
I'm sure he'll be even faster on his TanTan and I'm happy for him. TLDR: If you're blowing the wheels off people with much more expensive bikes then maybe you're just stronger than they are, and maybe you'd thrash them even harder if you had a bike more expensive than theirs? Who cares!
On topic: I've got a whole lot of "cheaper" Chinese branded parts on my genuine S5. I posted it up in a Chinese bicycle Facebook group and got bombarded with PM's asking me where I got the frame from
