Kona 2005

We took a year off last year, our second year off since we started the Kona Survey in 1992. We have no good excuse. We were tired.

But, invigorated by virtue of our year on the mainland, we came back strong and will commence our most thorough, detailed Kona Survey ever. We'll start off with an overview, and then add commentary in the days and weeks to come.

The big news is that Cervelo wins, and for the first time ever. Since 1992 it's been Trek at the top more often than not, with Cannondale occasionally in front and Kestrel on the top spot more than once. It's always been these three on the podium. Rounding out the top five throughout the 90s was Softride and Quintana Roo (QR moved ahead of Softride for good in '98).

Things have changed, and dramatically. Cervelo not only debuts as number-one in Kona, but by almost 30 units (195 to Trek's 166). It also has the most bikes ever in the pen by a single brand. What does this mean?

For starters, you can only leverage the good name of Lance Armstrong so far. You've got to have product to back up the marketing. Trek's introduction of the Equinox TTX, just before the race, is its ackowledgement of this, and an indication of its intention to get serious about this category.

Cervelo's result is also a repudiation of the idea that you can get by in triathlon through offering road race products to multisporters. In the early 1990s, you could do this. Trek's numbers as a percentage of total bikes in Kona's field were actually greater than Cervelo's, though Trek did not make a tri bike (Trek had 174 bikes in the field in 1993, and 176 a year later, out of 1400-plus starters). You can't do that in this decade. Consider this fact. In the year 2000 Trek, Kestrel and Cannondale were in a dead heat in Kona, each with more than 150 bikes in the field. That race, five years ago, saw Cervelo's first ever appearance in the top-10, with 45 bikes in the pen. Now, it's Cervelo at 195, Trek at 166, Kestrel with 104 and Cannondale with 80. What has been the difference? Cervelo makes tri bikes. The other three have spent more of their time making and touting road geometry designs.

Also notable is American Bicycle Group's reemergence as a force in triathlon. It was never out of the game, but its last two years of bike making has been impressive, and the numbers show. For what is probably the first time ever, Kona's bike pen contains more ABG bikes than those by any other corporate entity. Litespeed, Quintana Roo and Merlin have 115, 90 and 12 bikes respectively, to Trek's 166, 20 and 12 for Trek, Klein and LeMond. It must be noted, however, that Trek's other two brands do not offer tri-specific, though Klein once did. But it does underscore the point that you can't be a player in triathlon if you don't have tri geometry bikes.

The other upward mover is Kuota, debuting in 8th with 66 bikes, notable for a company that doesn't make a bike selling for less than $4000. But Stormin' Normann Stadler, last year's Kona champ, had a bad luck race in Kona this year, and triathletes have a short memory. We'll see how tightly Kuota's fate is tied to Normann's Kona performances.

On the flip side, Cannondale has dropped like a rock. This is probably due to its decision to stick with aluminum bikes. Yes, most of the Cervelos were also make of aluminum. Still, one would think that both C'dale and Felt would fare better if they were more carbon-specific. Felt is selling bikes to Kona competitors at a far smaller rate than would be indicated by its penetration into the triathlon market in general. Kona's competitors tend, it seems, to buy higher-end bikes, and I suspect it's Felt's performance in this price category that suffers. Its S32 and S25 models check very well at the cash register, but its B2 and S22 models need more carbon, and less front-end drop, to make a bigger splash in Kona.

Most of the Cervelos in the bike corral were aluminum (not even carbon seat stays). Cervelo had virtually no front-runners in the field. Cervelo has no industry muscle with which to twist the arms of its dealers. Cervelo isn't giving its bikes away. If you're a bike maker scratching your head, wondering why Cervelo dominates this race, there is no easy answer for you.

There were about 210 bicycle manufacturers with at least one bike in the race. This number has steadily arisen since we first counted bikes on the pier in Kona in 1992. In that year there were 160 manufacturers with one or more bikes on the Big Island. A decade later that number cracked the double century mark. The number keeps expanding.

For the first time perhaps (it's possible this happened last year, nobody knows) ABG wins the corporate challenge (for what it's worth). Litespeed's 115 bikes, added to Quintana Roo's 90 and Merlin's 12 give American Bicycle Group 217 bikes in the race. To Trek's 166 add 11 Kleins and 6 Lemonds, for 183 total bikes. Cervelo either needs to sell more bikes or buy a company with at least Guru's Kona penetration to win this next year. Or maybe it can persuade ABG to sell it Merlin.

Here are the bikes not previously mentioned who got into the double digits. Who to watch out of this group? Scott is pushing hard with its Plasma series, David Greenfield's Elite Bicycles keeps creeping up, and Javelin is hitting the tri market hard with lots of muscle and nice offerings for 2006. The most eye-popping bike out of this crowd is Orbea's Ordu. Each of these four companies is upwardly mobile. How fast can a company climb the ladder in Kona? Cervelo didn't crack the top-10 here until the year 2000, when it had 45 bikes in the race. Next year it will probably top 200 bikes in the race.

There are several companies notable for having only one bike represented in the 2005 edition of the Hawaiian Ironman. Many companies had only one bike, but several are notable for their single digit. K2 has tried fairly hard to crack the triathlon nut, but Heather Fuhr is still its only athlete here. Centurion had one bike only, and in the mid to late 1980s the Dave Scott Centurion was the hottest bike on the triathlon planet. Profile Design had one bike here, and many don't remember that this company used to make bikes long ago, in a galaxy far away. Likewise, remember when Zipp had the coolest bike going? There is at least one still racing, and it was here. Sigma had one bike. This is Spencer Smith's sponsor, and the sponsor of the Linda McCartney team for which he raced in Europe. Blue had a bike here, and for this up and coming company remember 2005, when there was only one of them in the race. Next year they may reach double digits.

As for the bike course record holder, Torbjorn Sinballe? His Argon 18 was one of 10 at the Hawaiian Ironman.

THE FULL BRAND TALLY

We've conducted this Kona Survey since 1992, and during those 14 years we've used a variety of methods. This year we employed a scheme that appears to have worked as well as any, and better than most.

We set up three tents, making a sort of tunnel through which the competitors lined up, and streamed past, on their way to rack their bikes in the transition area. As the bikes filed past both our two tables, five elements about each bike were tabulated: bike number, bike brand, seat angle, frame material and wheelsize. Each bike's data was recorded on one 3" x 5" card.

As the count progressed, another person collated these cards, and today there are two file boxes, each containing, in order, cards numbered 1 through 999, and 1000 through 1999 (in point of fact the bib numbers went only as high as 1822, and it appears to us that 1718 competitors made it as far as getting their bikes the racks the night before the race, not counting hand-cycle entrants).

We then created the mother of all spreadsheets, 200 columns wide by 1800 rows deep. Into these cells went the brand of bike, frame material, and so forth.

At the same time, Herbert Krabel (ABG's director of marketing, at left in the photo above), executed a "quick count" along with Triathlete Magazine's Sean Watkins, so that we could get an idea of which brands comprised the top-10 (I'm at right, and Linda Jane Kelly, aka "Football Mom" on the Slowtwitch Forum, is the tuna in the sandwich; she heads up much of what goes on at the "pier" the day before the Ironman).

Those bike brand numbers first reported come from the quick count. As we completed loading all the index card data onto the spreadsheet we were able to tabulate all the bike brand information, and you'll find it below.

CERVELO	198	ALLEN	2	INTENSE	1
TREK	170	ANATOMIC	2	INTERMAX	1
LITESPEED	114	BASSO	2	JAD	1
KESTREL	103	CARBONSPORT	2	K2	1
QUINTANA ROO	93	CYFAC	2	KHS	1
CANNONDALE	88	DEAN	2	KOLGA	1
GIANT	68	DOLAN	2	KUAFA	1
KUOTA	60	EXS	2	KUIPS	1
LOOK	46	HOLLAND	2	LAPIERRE	1
PRINCIPIA	44	HOTTA	2	LATIDO	1
SOFTRIDE	39	INTERLOC	2	MARINONI	1
SPECIALIZED	37	KELLY'S	2	MMB	1
FELT	36	KOBA	2	MONOC	1
CALFEE	31	KOCMO	2	MONTROSE	1
GRIFFEN	30	KOGA MIYATA	2	MOTO	1
GURU	23	LEADER	2	NEON	1
AEGIS	19	MONGOOSE	2	NEXA	1
ELITE	17	OPUS	2	NORCO	1
SEVEN	17	PORSCHE	2	NYTRO	1
SCOTT	16	PROGRESS	2	OLMO	1
SEROTTA	16	QUANTEC	2	OMEGA	1
CANYON	15	RED BULL	2	PANASONIC	1
CUBE	15	ROTWILD	2	PEARL	1
CEEPO	14	SIRER	2	PINE	1
COLNAGO	14	SPECTRUM	2	PLANET X	1
ORBEA	14	AGREST	1	PRIVETERRA	1
BIANCHI	13	ALPINA-GIRO	1	PROFILE	1
JAVELIN	13	AZZURRI	1	PROMOROSSO	1
MERLIN	12	BATTAGLIN	1	PRORACE	1
KLEIN	11	BAUER	1	RANDAZZO	1
ARGON 18	10	BH	1	RAVENELL	1
ISAAC	9	BIKE FRIDAY	1	ROARK	1
DE ROSA	7	BLUE	1	ROCK MACH	1
ATTACK	6	BOREAS	1	SALSA	1
AVANTI	6	BOSEVSKI	1	SAMPSON	1
FUJI	6	CBK	1	SCATTANTE	1
LEMOND	6	CENTURION	1	SIGMA	1
SIMPLON	6	CHAMIZO	1	SILENT SPORTS	1
TIME	6	CHEBICHI	1	SIMONETTI	1
YAQUI	6	CILO	1	SOMEC	1
BMC	5	CORIMA	1	SPECTRE	1
PINARELLO	5	CUCUMA	1	SPIN	1
STORCK	5	DACCORDI	1	STEELMAN	1
ZIEMAN	5	DECATHLON	1	STOWE	1
AIRBORNE	4	DEVINCI	1	STRONG	1
FONDRIEST	4	DITEC	1	TAYLOR	1
MERIDA	4	DURATEX	1	TI CYCLES	1
WILIER	4	ENDORFIN	1	TI SPORTS	1
TITANFLEX	4	EPK	1	TITUS	1
AUTHOR	3	FORTE	1	TOMMASINI	1
CHEETAH	3	FRAMESCI	1	TRI EXPERT	1
CINELLI	3	GENIUS	1	TSUNAMI	1
GARNEAU	3	GIANNIMUTA	1	TURRO	1
GHOST	3	GION	1	UNIVEGA	1
GT	3	GIURCI	1	VILLIGER	1
MAYSTORM	3	GUSTY	1	VINCOLO	1
MUSING	3	HED	1	VOTEC	1
RIDLEY	3	HERCULES	1	WMK	1
TESCHNER	3	IND. FAB.	1	ZANETTI	1
VAN DESSEL	3	INEXA	1	ZIPP	1
AQUILA	3

Most of the 180 brands listed above had totals that conformed closely to what we found in the quick count that night. It should be noted that of these 1718 bikes in the transition area, fully 40 of them were undecipherable as to brand, that is, they were logo-less, were not obviously of a particular make, and the owners didn't give us a clear idea what the brand was (usually because the owners didn't speak any language we spoke).

This means it's possible certain brands listed above had more bikes in the bike pen than we counted, but it is less likely that any brand had a smaller total.

There were some discrepancies. The quick count had Cervelo at 195 bikes, we have them at 198. We had Trek with 168, not 166, and Quintana Roo had three more in the racks (93) than was previousy reported. Every other brand in the top 15 was right on, or differed by a bike or at most two.

The one significant difference was Kuota, which showed 66 bikes in the rack upon first count, but we could only find 60 index cards with Kuota written on them. We do not know what to make of this, except that certain of the unnamed 40 might be Kuotas with custom pain (Kuota is doing this now, and this might've thrown some of our counters off). Either way, of course, Kuota had a fine increase from last year to this.

Marrying these four bike parameters with basic demographic information we already know, we can look at seat angle by continent, bike brand by age, and seat angle by sex. We expect to flog this spreadsheet every which way over the next several weeks, and you'll find our extrapolations here.

KONA SURVEY CENTRAL