Derailleur gears by 13 drive-train. Most road bicycles have two chainrings, and touring bicycles commonly have three. The rear derailleur serves double duty: moving the chain between rear sprockets and taking up chain slack caused by moving to a smaller sprocket at the rear or a smaller chainring by the front derailleur. In order to accomplish this second task, it is positioned in the path of the bottom, slack portion of chain. Sometimes the rear-derailleurs are re-purposed as chain tensioners for single-speed bicycles that cannot adjust chain tension by a different method. Although variations exist, as noted below, most rear derailleurs have
Derailleur gears lever chain tensioners mounted near or on the downtube. However, these systems, along with the rod-operated Campagnolo Cambio Corsa were eventually superseded by "parallelogram derailleurs". In 1937, the derailleur system was introduced to the Tour de France, allowing riders to change gears without having to remove wheels. Previously, riders would have to dismount in order to change their wheel from downhill to uphill mode. Derailleurs did not become common road racing equipment until 1938 when Simplex introduced a cable-shifted derailleur. In 1949 Campagnolo introduced the Gran Sport, a more refined version of the then already existing, yet less commercially successful,