You just can't beat distribution. Every year I think: This is the year Trek or Cannondale will be out of the top three. And every year I'm wrong. In fact, Cannondale pulls a surprise out of the hat every second or third year, and this year they just creamed everybody. They were the No. 1 bike in '95, followed by a year in which they lost 20 bikes to that year's survey winner Trek. Cannondale came back and tied Kestrel for the win in '97, then again had twenty fewer bikes in '98, losing badly to Kestrel. And now C'dale's back in front, by the healthiest margin since the early '90s--1992 I think it was--when Trek had a whopping 175 bikes in the race. Trek also outdueled Kestrel this year, adding eight bikes to their total of last year, and again without the benefit of a true triathlon frame.

Yes, Cannondale had an oval-shaped tubeset this year, and yes, Trek had the Tour de France winner riding its bikes in the Tour time trial (well, sort of). But I think Trek's 1,600 dealers in the U.S., Cannondale's 1,200, and both companies' continued penetration into overseas markets had a lot more to do with their increases. It's just hard for a small company like Kestrel or Cervelo--who only have a hundred good dealers apiece--to get their message across in places like Omaha and De Moines. That said, I look for Kestrel to take a bite out of everybody next year with the introduction of their small-sized KM40, and Cervelo will also stay on the increase with its very fine bikes.

Softride has been up and down, 95 bikes in 1995, followed by years of 127, 96, 115, and 93. That means next year they should have 120. Or it means this year's decrease is the beginning of the decline of beam bikes. Tune in same time next year and we'll see.

SEAT ANGLE

The steep riders have it, by almost two to one. But this geometry style isn't gaining ground. Steep riders gained just one percentage point from last year, and a point-and-a-half each year is the trend (in 1995 58% of the riders were riding 76 degree or steeper configurations). Shallow geometry can be more easily defended for the hillier terrains of Nice or Zofingen. But God invented the Kona course for steep-angled bikes, and I predict the slow, steady increase in tri configurations on this course will continue.

WHEEL SIZE

A stasis has been reached in wheel size. In every Hawaiian Ironman since 1996 the count has revealed--within two points either way--a 50/50 split between dual 700c and dual 650c. But I look for a trend back to 700c for the taller riders. More companies are making their taller bikes in 700c, starting from around 57cm. So eventually it should end up about 60/40 in favor of dual 700c-wheeled bikes.

In my opinion, that's not how the trend should go. If more triathletes bought the bikes they really ought to buy for this course, the percentage would be 60/40 in favor of dual 650c. But as long as triathletes continue to buy fancy road race bikes from their neighborhood "pro" shop, they'll walk out the door with OCLV's, Klein Quantums, or whatever else the shop owner has in stock. In a way, this is a testament to the neighborhood bricks-and-mortar style of selling. Any domination of the tri-bike business by e-commerce may be a little further in the future.

WHEEL BRAND

Zipp has always been strong at Ironman. President Andy Ording, who is now the owner of Zipp as well, knows how to appeal to the techie looking for the lightest, fastest wheel for the course. But Zipp barely beat Mavic, which is a very good showing for the French company, since it does not have near the pedigree in triathlon as do Zipp and Hed.

If you consider how many bikes are of foreign manufacture, though, you can see one reason why Mavic ranks so highly. If you're coming to this race from Europe, you're coming on a Principia, Cube, Look, Colnago, Vitus, Giant, or maybe a Cannondale. These bikes are going to be spec'd in Europe with Mavic wheels.

One would expect Spinergy to still be up there, as they were riding high on the hog a couple of years ago and those wheels will still be around. But at its booth at Interbike last month, Spinergy was showing the trade a plethora of traditional (by Spinergy's standard) style wheels, with one lonely RevX sitting in the back. It seems their future (or the future they want) is in a more traditional looking wheel, and mostly for off-road.

Hed remains strong and always will--it may not claim the No. 1 spot, but when Hed makes a customer it makes one for life. Rolf will climb the rungs by sitting on Trek's coattails (if you buy a Trek you get a pair of Rolfs).

HANDLEBARS

56% of the bikes had their clip-ons mounted on pursuit bars, 43% on road bars. Syntace outfitted 44% of the bikes in this race two years ago, Profile 33%, Scott 16.5%. Since then Syntace has taken ten percentage points from Profile, and bit into Scott's market share as well (Scott's now a non-player). The others are chipping away a little, TTT has 23 more tri bars in the race than they did two years ago, and Vision Tech has doubled its count since then. These second-tier companies are emboldened, because Scott has pulled out of the North American bike market altogether, and so long as these other companies feel they can compete against Scott without the threat of a lawsuit, they'll thumb their nose at any nasty cease-and-desist letter Scott's lawyer sends them.

This is largely due to Vision Tech's ability to keep making and selling bars under Scott's nose. RAAM riders Jim Elliot and the Pennsyres brothers were using bars quite like Scott's in '84 and '85, and it seems Scott has lost the will to ring up legal bills fighting companies which bring up that inconvenient history.

FRAME MATERIALS

In 1992, steel was the most ridden frame material in the Ironman. By 1995, it was carbon at 39% followed by aluminum at 31%. Steel bikes still accounted for one in every five bikes back then, and 11% of the bikes were made of titanium. Aluminum keeps growing in popularity since it is an extremely easy material to work with, and very lightweight frames can be made out of it. Carbonfiber was a red-hot frame material several years go, but that was when most of the carbon bikes were "screw and glue" (round carbon tubes glued into aluminum forged lugs). Now the only composite bikes you'll find in the race are monocoques, like Kestrels and OCLV's, and they are pretty expensive bikes to buy. So carbon has found its point of stasis, with its upward movement in the rankings limited by the money it takes to buy a carbon bike these days.

It's the same story with titanium, and this has a lot to do with the craze for bladed or shaped tubing. It's pretty hard to make this kind of frame out of titanium. The Litspeed Blade is really the only one out there. With a lot of people (wrongly, in my view) thinking that any "aero" tubed bike must be better than any round tubed bike, you've got to be a good salesman to sell a $4,000 round-tubed tri bike, even though it is a ti frame.

But titanium is still gaining in popularity if you restrict your count to the two big ti companies out there. Although ti has hovered one point above or below 10% all of the previous four years, and has fallen to 7.5% this year, Litespeed has steadily grown over the past five years, 50, 53, 62, 69, and this year 81 frames in the race, respectively. Merlin, with this year's introduction of the Aerial--its first true tri bike--has roughly doubled its count from last year, and has more than thirty bikes in the race for the first time since the early '90s.