• This year's survey will go up over a period of a couple of weeks, as we collate more data. When we put more of the survey up we'll place a note on the Slowtwitch front page.

• LAST YEAR'S SURVEY
• THIS YEAR'S SURVEY
• BIKES OF THE MALE PROS

And you thought the Mark and Dave race in '89 was close. That was a runaway. This one was the sqeeker. In the end, Cannondale outnosed Kestrel and Trek, with 152 bikes in the race to 151 for the other two brands. But C'dale's hold is slipping. It had a clear advantage last year, at 160 bikes in the race to 130 and 123 for Trek and Kestrel respectively. Now the gap is closed.

The difference was C'dale's inability to put together a coherent bike line this past season coupled with Trek's knock-'em-dead Hilo series, and Kestrel's small-sized KM40 to complement their other, best-selling, SKU.

That trend is just going to continue, as C'dale hasn't come up with a better answer for 2001, and Kestrel has upped the ante with their new Talon.

Next in line was Quintana Roo, slightly off its game with 92 bikes. QR had 120 bikes in the race two years ago, and dipped just under 100 last year. This was QR's worst showing since '96, when it had this same number of bikes in the race.

Softride lost a handful of bikes from last year, but remained a strong 5th. Many of its bikes are the new Rocketwing, and I don't think Softride is going away. It is expected that Softride would level out in the 80-90 bike range, because it doesn't offer a price-point bike any longer, and so can't access that market.

In the battle of the behemoths, there was another horserace, with Trek and Litespeed running to a dead heat. Both companies had 181 bikes in the race if you count up the brands they own.

We have to add an addendum at this point, that we've gotten some bike count totals that differ by 5 or 10 bikes relative to somebody who counted after all the bikes were into the pen (we counted bikes as they were going into the pen). The Griffen people counted their bikes in the pen and found that our totals and there's tallied exactly. However our totals of the top three brands did not exactly equal a second surveyor. Our totals were higher, and that can happen when riders exit the pen for bike repairs (not everybody's bikes pass inspection). We try to keep track of those leaving the pen just to re-enter at a later time, but we may have missed some.

Dual 650c-wheel bikes have been almost the equal of their larger cousins in years past, but 700c has gained a bit this year. The small wheels now make up 45.8% of the bikes in the race, 53.3% for dual 700c wheels. This is a slight move in favor of 700c versus last year, where 650c wheels made up 48.4% to 51.6% for 700c. I saw a lot of Cannondale R1000 Aero, and QR/Merlin PR7s and Aerial 7s. Also in the field were a fair amount of 700c Cervelos. I don't know this -- I'm checking -- but I also believe there were a fair bit more Italians, Italian Swiss, and Italian Austrians, based on the languages they were speaking and the bikes they were riding. I believe this might be a result of the greater ease of qualifying for Ironman at Ironman races in Switzerland and Austria. At first blush these seem to be the reasons for the increase in 700c-wheeled bikes.

We've hit a ceiling, and I guess I'm not surprised, although this is not what I predicted last year. But I learned something this year that I didn't know last year, that there is just a certain percentage of people who haven't found a way to get comfortable on steeper bikes, and have said to hell with it. The ratio of 60/40 steep-to-shallow seems to be about where things are likely to stay. but the pros are still around 66/33. Our definition of "steep" is anything 76-degrees or steeper. We actually found some bikes built for steep-seat-angle bikes that we classified as shallow, inasmuch as they were built with 76- or 76.5-degree seat angles but had the saddle back far enough so as to not qualify -- to our trained eyes- as steep. Likewise, anything built shallower than that but with a forward-positioned seat angle we counted as steep. Remember, we're talking about relative seat position here, not the geometry of the bike as-built.

Another interesting find was something unexpected -- this one slipped under our noses (us not hanging out in bike shop service departments very much). The Thompson set-back seat post -- the one with the dogleg in the post -- can be used as a forward seat post if turned around. It works great, and we saw two or three riders using it this way.

PROGNOSTICATIONS

In last year's survey I said, "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." And, "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."

So I was 1-for-2. The wheelsize issue seems to be falling about where I suspected it would, but for slightly different reasons. It isn't just that larger tri-bikes bikes are now being built with 700c wheels, but that -- I'm guessing -- disparate Ironman races around the world are drawing qualifiers from countries (like Italy) that are less likely to ride a 650c bikes. On the steep-seat-angle phenomen it seems that there is a legitimate difference of opinion, not simply an issue of waiting for people to catch up. But it still seems that the fastest pros are riding somewhat steeply -- at least 75.5 or so degrees. This would include virtually all the Germans (they pretty much all ride 78-degrees, including Normann Stadler). The North Americans are mixed. Peter Reid rides at 75-76 degrees, for example. But Glah and Widoff are still riding quite shallow. Udo Bolts rode basically a standard road bike with an aero down tube.