Thirty athletes toed the line in Kona from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Chile. We've lumped them altogether and maybe that's significant and fair and tells us something. Maybe it doesn't. We have no way of knowing whether it's meaningful to lump Colombia in with Argentina but we've done it anyway.

The Most of these athletes come from either Brazil or Argentina: 17 came from Brazil, 10 from Argentina, 2 from Chile and 1 from Colombia. They had a pretty coherent set of stats, actually. They were within one either way of being split down the middle on both base handlebar type (drop versus pursuit) and steep versus shallow seat angles.

They chose Profile Design over Syntace 14 to 10 with the other aero bar manufacturers splitting up the other six.

The chose 700c wheels over 650c wheels by a margin of 17 to 13. Eighteen of these 30 athletes rode aluminum bikes, and 11 chose carbon. That adds up to 29 out of the 30, and we don't have a record of what the 30th rode.

Seven of them rode Cannondales, and that makes sense, because we happen to personally know the Cannondale distributor for Brazil and Argentina and he's particularly strong. Four of these came from Argentina and 3 from Brazil.

Kestrel had six bikes in the race and none came from Argentina: 4 were from Brazil, with one each from Chile and Colombia. There were 3 Quintana Roos from South America, 2 Treks, 2 Specialized, and several companies with 1 bike each.

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