The idea behind this survey has always been to predict trends, that is, to extrapolate the Kona Survey results to make generalizations about the market as a whole. Correct or not, the idea is this: The best triathlete on the block, all around the world, goes to Kona. If this is true, and if these athletes are the "key influencers," then maybe we can tell some things about how triathlon bike and component sales and technology is going to go throughout the year and beyond.

In that spirit we're looking at market share a bit differently than we have in the ten previous years we've been surveying Kona's bikes. We're going to look at market share in the bike corral, and how that's changed over the past three years. We're looking at it not in total numbers, but as a percentage of the field. We're doing so because the field grew by 5-percent this year, and we want to compare the growth rate in real numbers.

In the chart at left, the blue bar represents the percent share in the most recent race. Trek, for example, has the largest market share: 9.52% of all bikes in the race bore a Trek headbadge. This is down from 9.73% of all the bikes last year, and 10.28% bikes the year before.

Kestrel gained from 2000 to 2001, and then fell back a bit in 2002. Cannondale has rather steeply and steadily declined over the past two years (30%), but on a percentage rate the steepest decliner in the top ten is Quintana Roo, which has dropped about 37% over the past two years.

The big gainer is Cervelo, which has gained 106% in two years, most of that coming in the most recent year.

Giant dipped a bit last year and then surged this year. Litespeed did the opposite. The world's premier titanium bike maker has the same market share as Cervelo (6.29%) in the most current Kona according to its own bike count.

It'll be interesting to watch Cannondale's chart versus Kestrel's going forward. If the former official Ironman bike declines in market share and C'dale reverses its trend and surges upward, it'll speak to the power of having the official M-dot bike.