Frog Road 67 children's racing bike test: The British children's racing bike from Frog stands for early entry into road and cross-sports. The question of whether a specialized bike makes sense for this at the age of eight or ten is particularly clear with the Frog given its conceptual weaknesses.
"I want a handlebar like that too!" Well, have you ever heard of it? Where parents ride racing bikes, sooner or later the children want to do the same. But what distinguishes the racer at first glance is also the problem: handling, grip positions and braking are not easy, even for inexperienced adults; someone who, due to their age, is still fully occupied with cycling will naturally find it even more difficult. And the sitting position is one of those things: Positioning yourself stretched out on the bike, with your head back, is anything but age-appropriate. Younger children in particular should sit as upright as possible; Due to their significantly smaller field of vision, they are dependent on a maximum overview in traffic. This usually means that the handlebars are significantly higher than the saddle, which is of course difficult on a racing bike.
The Frog 67 is a good example of how complicated it is to design a road bike suitable for children. It starts with the fact that the range of sizes is inevitably very limited - so the Brits make do with equipping their beginner model with 20-inch wheels and placing two racers with 24 or 26-inch wheels on top of them, which differ in the equipment and slightly in the length of the top tube. The model designations 58, 67 and 70 refer to the minimum inner leg length of the small driver, which means that by the time eleven or twelve years have passed, the middle “racing frog” presented here has outgrown it.
Age-appropriate equipment
To ensure driving pleasure until then, the equipment is robust and kept simple. Nine-speed derailleur gears and cantilever brakes indicate that this is not a pure racing bike: With wider, profiled tires, it passes as a cross-country bike - ready for a demanding but also playful discipline that children really enjoy. With a 32 chainring and 12 to 27 teeth at the rear, it is definitely prepared for off-road use. The Frog also has a feature that was typical of cross bikes until before the triumph of disc brakes: the additional brake levers on the handlebars, colloquially called "froglegs", but that's nothing related to this manufacturer. The extra levers make it possible to keep your hands permanently on the top link, which allows you to sit as upright as this bike allows. In addition, the braking effect is greatest in this position. The Microshift shift-brake levers are tailored to small hands - "the" because the left shifter is also installed. With some effort, you could also convert the bike to 2×9 gears. What is practical about this specification are the chain guard discs, which prevent the chain from jumping off and getting caught.
Inappropriate geometry spoils the road bike fun on the Frog Road 67
So far, so good - the frame geometry of the British children's racer, of course, causes headaches, as two things in particular stand out. For one thing, the head tube is extremely short; Four spacers are stacked under the stem so that the handlebars can be positioned high enough. This looks ugly and together with the stem pointing upwards means that you can only lower the handlebars, but no longer raise them.
Point two and the much bigger problem is the extremely high positioned bottom bracket. The distance between the center of the crankshaft and the ground is a whopping 275mm - almost an inch more than a balanced adult road bike with 28" wheels. If you now think of off-road tires on the Frog, the bottom bracket moves up a few millimeters again. You can easily imagine what that means: when the saddle height is optimally adjusted, the child sits well above the ground; In order to be able to reach it with the forefoot on both sides while sitting, the saddle must be set so low that the knee angle becomes too narrow when pedaling and power transmission is impaired.
Again for comparison: If you put the 175 mm cranks on Dad's road bike in a vertical position, the tip of the lower crank is about 9 cm above the ground. With the Frog 67, which is equipped with 130 mm long children's cranks, this distance is a full 15,5 cm. The bottom bracket could therefore easily be lowered by 6 to 7 cm, which would also have a positive effect on the height difference between saddle and handlebars.
Can a children's road bike work at all?
As it is, one wonders whether it makes sense to use Frog to prepare a young child for road cycling. If you get used to the racing handlebars and have a generally problematic position on the bike, you could quickly lose all the fun you have with a sports bike. In view of the rather high price of the Frog, one is inclined to put the offspring on a solid, well-constructed children's MTB for a few more years, which can even be converted to 1×11 gearing for a comparable amount of money. Here the Frog can only score with its low weight: 8,8 kilos with pedals is a really good value. It's a shame that the visually appealing bike shows such weaknesses where it counts.
