We surveyed everything this year. All the brands––over 200 of them. I'd say we counted every Tom, Dick, and Harry bike brand in the race except there were no Ritcheys, Sachs, or Havnoonians in Kona this year.

What there were in Kona were 37 companies that had at least five bikes in the race. Funny who didn't make this list. You start to realize that triathletes do tend to choose their own sport-specific brands when you see companies like Aquila, Latido, and Canyon on this list, while De Rosa, Merckx, and Rossin didn't make it. Yaqui had as many bikes in the race as Raleigh. There were twice as many Titanflexes (4) as Mosers and Olmos combined.

It's really amazing that Kestrel wins this survey when you consider how much Kestrels cost. One would think you've got to have a lot of bikes selling in the mid teens to come out on top. But Kona competitors aren't afraid to spend for their bikes. There were not very many Trek Hilos in the race, for example. The vast majority were Trek's considerably more expensive OCLVs. Cannondale and Quintana Roo were the only two companies out of the first nine with the majority of their bikes priced under $2000.

Kestrel and Cannondale were in a dogfight last year, and basically tied for the win. This year Kestrel pulled away and C'dale faded a bit. Litespeed made a big jump at the expense of its sister company QR. Litespeed leap-frogged over QR and Softride to move into fourth on the list. It's the first time Litespeed has ever been in the top five in this survey (ten years running).

Principia took a bit of a hit. falling from 71 bikes last year to 51. There is a multiplier one can apply in rough terms to gauge retention, which is to say that if a company went out of business the day after Kona there would still be, say, two-thirds or three-fourths of its bikes back the subsequent year. This is because the good athletes keep requalifying and they only change their bikes so often (there are still six Zipps in the race and these bikes haven't been made for several years). When one looks at the drop in Principias one must come to the conclusion that it may not've sold that many tri bikes last year. We don't know what the "retention multiplier" is, but there is no way you come to Kona with 30% fewer bikes unless you didn't sell many to triathletes in the intervening year. We suspect it may be because Principia's focus may have changed to, say, road racing. Indeed the lowest bib number we could find riding a Principia was 197, and that athlete lists himself as a stockbroker. Is Principia sponsoring any athletes who go to Kona?

While Principia seems to be falling off a bit as among European long-distance triathletes, we thought that twenty-five was a pretty respectable total for Look. This is further evidence, we think, of Kona-bound athletes moving up in price expenditures for their bikes. Just behind look was Aegis, and also up there were other monocoque carbon bikes like Calfee and Colnago (there were a lot of carbon Colnagos). While aluminum is hot as a frame material, everthing is hot at the expense of steel, as can be seen in our look at frame materials. All other frame materials gained at steel's expense.

There were an absolute ton of Japanese bike makers represented in Kona, mostly ridden by Japanese athletes. Intermax, Shiromoto, Westy, Attack, Kijafa, Peter Piper, Latido and Maystorm were just a few, and these are in addition to more mainstream brands like Miyata and Panasonic. It seems that just about every Japanese trading company and a few of the shops have their own brand.