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@bertocq
My uncle's brother was a pro-cyclist in his day, and that was what he said "I tried those biopace, hurt like hell, you shouldn't use shit like that".
But Biopace got the chainrings in the opposite position, compared to today's non circular chainrings (Doval, Rotor, Osymetrics). They got it totally wrong, and that's why many people that tried them or heard about them don't even want to get near todays other options.
This is a biopace description image:
You can see how the radius was higher in the deadspot, and smaller in the point where you could deliver the most amount of power. The opposite to what Doval, Rotor, Osymetrics try to do...
About the knee problems, I'm my experience (road, mtb, fixie, etc...) People tend to use their bikes without a good initial position adjustment, or at least without re-adjusting when something starts hurting, and then blames the saddle, or whatever else... but I just did 1000km straight and nothing hurt, so it must have something to do with a good biomechanical study. But its also true that there is people that a small amount of change in the position creates a lot of problems for them, whereas others tend to just adapt and don't get hurt...