Rim design is subject to two competing demands. When you’re trying to go faster, it helps to have rims that are as light as possible. Your wheels are spinning around as well as along, so saving weight on them makes the bike feel substantially faster than saving the same weight on a static part of your bike like the handlebars. So ideally, the rims should be as thin as possible so that they don’t weigh much. Light wheels mean it’s much easier to make your bike accelerate, as well as to make it change direction when you’re moving fast.
If this doesn’t make sense to you, take a wheel off your bike. Hold each end of the axle and move the whole wheel up and down. Then spin the wheel…
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Bike Maintenance Tips, Tricks & Techniques (Digital) - 1 Issue, Bike Maintenance Tips, Tricks & Techniques 3rd Edition