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In cycling, we use the terms Clydesdale or Athena to identify riders who are a few sigmas above the mean in terms of weight. I’m surprised we don’t have these tags.

There is a tag “heavy” but many Clydesdale and Athena riders find this term (as well as the f*t word) to be pejorative.

The only problem is that the terms Clydesdale and Athena are not well known outside of those rider communities.

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    I'd never heard of athena till this question.
    – Criggie Mod
    Dec 24, 2017 at 19:44
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    I've never heard of Athena either, but I have heard Clydesdale thrown around frequently in a non-pejorative manner. Kona even used the term Clydesdale in the marketing description for their "Hoss" model of bike.
    – Deleted User
    Jan 7, 2019 at 16:19
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    @Michael done - you can totally edit things like that in where appropriate as long as they improve the post.
    – Criggie Mod
    Sep 25 at 21:19
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    @Criggie I tried clicking the Edit link first. I get a red bar that says "Suggested edits are not allowed on non-tag-wiki posts on meta sites."
    – Michael
    Sep 26 at 13:08
  • @Michael - sorry for that, but on the other hand I learned something today and its not even 7 AM.
    – Criggie Mod
    Sep 26 at 18:22
  • @Criggie No worries. We can't see each other's UI. Thanks for the tag-add! =)
    – Michael
    Sep 26 at 18:45

2 Answers 2

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Is there any synonym that's not pejorative, but likely to be more widely understood than "clydesdale" and "athena"?

I'm happy to set up synonyms (and merge tags around), but I'd prefer to have the primary tag be something easily understood by most people, but also not be considered pejorative.

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  • Those are the terms preferred by people in the community. There’s nothing inherently pejorative about a Clydesdale - it’s an extremely sturdy well built horse.
    – RoboKaren
    Jan 3, 2018 at 19:31
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    @RoboKaren My objection to "clydesdale" is that when it's on a post, it won't be clear what it means to many people. A subset of english-speaking cyclists know that term, but will somebody who isn't themselves a "clysedale" know? Or a newer cyclist? Or a cyclist without a lot of community connections? Or somebody who speaks English as a second language? "heavier-rider" is, at least, pretty clear what it means.
    – freiheit
    Jan 3, 2018 at 19:39
  • That’s a good point that could be clarified in the tag description. People right now seem to be using the tag “heavy” which one can argue is just as pejorative.
    – RoboKaren
    Jan 3, 2018 at 19:41
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    Side-note: my weight while cycling has been between 240lbs (108kg) and 270lbs (122kg). That exceeds the weight limits for many cycling companies. I have very rarely ever heard the term "clydesdale" and never used it. Never heard "athena" until today.
    – freiheit
    Jan 3, 2018 at 19:41
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    N=1 isn’t a good counterargument. It does seem specific to certain American and British communities.
    – RoboKaren
    Jan 3, 2018 at 19:42
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    Both terms are widely used on bikeforums.net, which is a very longstanding and popular online forum for cyclists—in fact, there's a board titled "Clydesdales/Athenas." I don't know if that's where they originated or if the terms are mostly local to that.
    – Adam Rice
    Aug 26, 2018 at 22:02
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Perhaps heavy and athena should be synonoms of clydesdale ?

Sounds like a perfect use of synonoms.

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  • I agree but I think we need someone with mod points to set up synonyms?
    – RoboKaren
    Dec 24, 2017 at 19:46
  • @RoboKaren "Creating a tag synonym requires 5 score in this tag." and 2500 overall. A mod can do it at any time. I'm slightly confused if C should be a synonom for H or H should be a synonon for C. And I've not yet found a single question where Athena fits.
    – Criggie Mod
    Dec 25, 2017 at 2:16
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    Very few women admit to being Athena’s so they’re likely to not show up much. I think Clydesdale should be the main term with heavy as a synonym.
    – RoboKaren
    Dec 25, 2017 at 7:18
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    I am not opinionated about which direction the synonym points, but I do think there should be one.
    – Michael
    Sep 25 at 15:24
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    I strongly favour clydesdale being a synonym of heavy, or heavy-rider or something like that. I did an informal poll of people I ride with, and nobody had ever heard of "clydesdale." (And they also found it kind of dumb; someone suggested "hulk" and they mostly thought that was preferable.)
    – DavidW
    Oct 26 at 15:20

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