When I first conducted a Kona bike survey (this is my tenth annual), there were 160 bike manufacturers represented in the race. I found that an astoundingly high number, and over the years that number seemed to shrink. The trend has reversed, however, and in the 2001 Hawaiian Ironman there were more than 200 companies with at least one bike in the race. This phenomenon can be explained in one word: aluminum. Well, perhaps two words: weldable #7005 (if "#7005" is a word).

Easton first came out with a marketable bike tubeset made from this alloy in the beginning of the 1990s, and it changed the face of bike manufacturing. Previously, pretty much any bike company that wanted to make bikes out of aluminum had to use an alloy that required heat treating in a solution bath heated to roughly a thousand degrees F. This is not a particularly cheap process, and it limited the entry of new companies into the market. What #7005 did was make it all a lot easier. You did not need to heat-treat the frame, but just artificially age it in an oven that only needed to reach 350 F.

Even if a welder didn't have an oven like that (which is easy to make in any case), he didn't need to worry because his painter probably had an oven that would do the job. Overnight painters had another (if small) second source of income: artificially aging their clients' #7005 frames.

As can be seen in the chart above, since 1995 aluminum has not only surpassed carbon as the material of choice, it now represents over half the bikes in the race. Certainly it's true that not all of these bikes are #7005. Indeed, all the largest manufacturers of aluminum bikes—Cannondale, Cervelo, Quintana Roo (the new ones), Giant, Specialized, Principia, Griffen, Softride—make 6000-series bikes. But the large increases in total number of manufacturers comes from the new builders who are big users of #7005. Indeed, my rough tally of all the 6000-series bikes from the large companies above total only about half of the almost 800 aluminum bikes in the race.

Meanwhile, working with carbon fiber has become more difficult and expensive for new bike builders. Gone are the days of round carbon tubes bonded to aluminum lugs, as was the case in the late 1980s and early '90s when companies like Vitus ruled at Kona. Now it's monocoque bikes with molds costing up to $75,000 per size. While these are very popular bikes, not very many companies can play. Trek, Kestrel, Aegis and Look make up the great majority of all the carbon bikes in the race.

Titanium is staging a bit of a comeback. Not since 1995 has this material cracked the double digits. It's now at 11+ percent, and it's mostly on the back of Litespeed's sales to Kona entrants. Litespeed represents 60 percent of all the titanium bikes in Kona. Of the 161 titanium bikes in the race only 15 were Merlins, and this was the second most heavily represented titanium manufacturer. Considering the fact that Merlins are made in Litespeed's Chattanooga factory—as are several other of the titanium brands in the field—it's obvious who should get the blame or the praise for the success or lack thereof of titanium as a Kona frame material in the years to come.