Out of the roughly 1,460 entrants in the 2001 Hawaiian Ironman, two rode their bikes with no aero bars.

As for the rest, Syntace was the favorite, with 707 aerobars in the transition area. That compares with Profile Design's 549 bars. 3T came in third with 45, Cinelli next with 37, and VisionTech wrapped up the top five with 32. Scott had 31 bars in the race, and these are leftovers from when Scott was in the aero bar business. No other company had more than 11 bars in the race.

How does this compare historically? Syntace still rules the roost, but Profile Design is making inroads. We last surveyed aero bar brands two years ago, and at that time Profile Design had about a fourth of the field on its bars. That 25 percent has now jumped to 40 percent.

Some have suggested that you need to look at sponsorship arrangements when taking that into account. So we did. Profile Design's increase over the past two years has been from 340 bars in the race to 549. We juxtaposed this increase of over 200 aerobars with the number of bars Profile Design has among the top 100 bib numbers, which is 52. Certainly Profile Design's athlete promotion department has been busy, but if you take all these top-100 bibs out of the race, you'll still see an increase of more than 150 Profile Design aerobars in the field.

This company's big jump in market share is being taken out of which other bar makers' hides? Not too much from Syntace. Yes, Syntace's bar count has decreased during the past two years, but only from 750 to 707. The biggest loser over that period was Scott, the original aero bar maker. It has stopped its aerobar production, and has therefore dwindled from 103 bars in Kona two years ago to just 31 bars today. 3T and Vision Tech also have lost a little ground, from 63 and 56 respectively two years ago to 45 and 32 today. It should be noted, however, that Vision Tech has shifted its promotional focus from top triathletes to the U.S. Postal Service bike racing team, and therefore has not placed an emphasis on generating high Kona numbers.

There are some newcomers. Cinelli, a venerable name in the road bike handleber market, had 37 aero bars in the race, and another Italian company, ITM, had 11. Shiromoto, an innovative Japanese company that also makes popular bikes and wetsuits, had ten bars in the race.

There were no fewer than 187 integrated handlebars in Kona, and by this we mean a setup that has a pursuit bar and aero extensions wrapped into one unit. Examples of this would be Vision Tech, Profile Design's Carbon X, and Cheetah bikes, in which the handlebars and fork are all one unit. We suspect the trend toward integrated bars is one to watch.

Finally, it would be wrong to conclude this discussion without a mention of original equipment. When you consider why athletes ride what they ride in Kona, it ought to be noted that it is not always an issue of an athlete making a conscious choice of aerobar. Many or most of the bikes in the race were ridden as they were originally outfitted—with the aerobars that came on the bike when purchased, most often Syntace and Profile Design. This no doubt has a lot of bearing on the stranglehold these aero bar companies have on the Kona market. To gauge the rate of aftermarket purchases we'd have to exclude those bikes which in our judgment were outfitted with O.E. bars, and survey the rest. Perhaps we'll do that in a future survey.