Almost three out of every five bikes were made of aluminum in Kona. Of this 59%, 2.5% had carbon seatstays or some other significant carbon component, and the rest were simply aluminum throughout.

Carbon bikes made up 27.5% of the field, but 31% of the bikes had some carbon in them: 2.5% (38 bikes) were aluminum/carbon and 1% (12 bikes) were ti/carbon.

Titanium bikes made up 11% of the field if you count the ti/carbon bikes as essentially titanium bikes. This is about where ti historically is, and while it ebbs and flows it doesn't vary too much from this 10% level. I fear that it won't soon exceed this and may dip a bit under 10%, because the historic availability of the "$2500 ti bike" is pretty much gone unless some company fills this niche with a sought-after tri bike. I say this because Litespeed's Tachyon used to sell for the mid-$2000s, and Litespeed built its tri business off the back of this very popular model. Now you can't touch either a ti Litespeed or QR for under $3000, yet the carbon and aluminum bikes haven't undergone this sort of price creep.

The one thing that will never change is that nothing ever stays the same. Things change. Those two words have been the constant truism in my business life, and that includes the world of bike manufacture. The chart adjacent demonstrates this. The year after I took this survey steel dropped precipitously, from 19% to 12% of the field. I wrote in the '96 survey, "...we don't see how steel bikes can fall below 12%, it is too good a frame material for that." Here we are a half-dozen years later and steel bikes made up 2.5% of the field. I find that laughable, considering how many of the best tri bikes ever made were made of steel. I do know of one company that plans to bring back a very good steel bike it mothballed almost a decade ago, and at a very attractive price. We'll see how well that bike does if it does in fact make it back into the market.

Aluminum has of course surpassed anyone's exectations. Back in '95 carbon was the most oft used material in Kona and seemed still on the rise. Yet a year later it had fallen several point and aluminum had overtaken it as the predominant material.