As many Slowtwitchers know, the Survey began in 1992, by me, during the time I owned and ran the company I founded in 1987, Quintana Roo. I produced this Survey until the end of my QR days in 1999, and continued the Survey through 2006 as a Slowtwitch feature.
Over a 2-week period I'll be reproducing these Surveys precisely as they were written, with the exact graphs published at the time. The only difference will be prefaces like these.
This 1997 Ironman saw the high water mark of 650c wheels. In 1996 and 1998 the race had about equal numbers of 650c and 700c bikes. It is my guess that we miscounted in 1997. Our tally sheets had 3 in every 4 bikes 650c. Whoever we had counting wheelsize was almost certainly seeing more small-wheeled bikes than were actually in the race. Still, this is the one year when 650c probably outnumbered 700c in almost every category of racer (pro, AG, men, women). -DE
I was surprised by the number of Kestrels in the race. We counted 114 of these in last year's Ironman survey, and the jump to 148 is very impressive. Trek, with 1600 dealers in the US, plus robust foreign distributors, will always be near the top simply due to the breadth of its distribution.
Cannondale, with 1200 dealers, and foreign distribution equal or better to Trek's, fell from 150 bikes each of the last two years to 133.
The Cannondale line largely "relocated" itself downward in price point during the 1997 season, however, and it is questionable whether the Hawaiian Ironman athlete will tend toward bikes under $1000.
Softride fell precipitously, from 127 bikes last year to 96. The year before they had 95 bikes in this race. Quintana Roo went from 92 bikes to 107.
Most of the bikes were aluminum, that is due to the large numbers of Cannondales, Principias, QR's, and Softrides. But there were a lot of "off-brand" aluminums as well, some very nice bikes. It seems that frame material has reached down to the level of the smaller custom frame builders.
Titanium seems to have found its level. I think titanium deserves more of a presence, but as of now there are not a lot of good contract builders. Maybe that will change with the opening up of more Chinese factories that had been given over primarily to defense purposes.
We've never polled handlebars before, and thought it might be interesting. We were at first surprised that Syntace won so handily. Profile is, to my knowledge, the best selling handlebar in the US. But Syntace is the large leader in Europe, well, at least in the German speaking countries, which is where most of the European Ironman entrants come from. Also, we put Syntace bars on all of our bikes (but then Cannondale puts Profile on all of theirs).
