We perform these surveys to see what the acme of the sport is buying at their local bike shops -- that, and perhaps what the pros are doing that the age-groupers haven't caught onto yet.

	1	CERVELO	257
	2	TREK	123
	3	QUINTANAROO	116
	4	KESTREL	83
	5	CANNONDALE	83
	6	KUOTA	77
	7	LITESPEED	69
	8	SCOTT	66
	9	SPECIALIZED	58
	10	GIANT	56
	11	FELT	40
	12	GURU	38
	13	LOOK	38
	14	ORBEA	34
	15	SOFTRIDE	23

There is one age-group trend that screams out to anyone paying even the most casual attention to the bikes ridden in this year's Hawaiian Ironman. When one looks at all the new bikes -- those purchased over the past 12 months -- they are carbon, and they're all tri specific. No more aluminum bikes showing up here, unless they were bought sometime back and their owners are amortizing their investments for a whole longer.

The other factor specific to this race is the bike's geometry: all the new bikes are tri specific. One need only look at the first two brands on the list to see how the typical tri bike company fared, versus those companies that didn't execute as did Cervelo, QR, and the rest who gained share.

Cervelo's big run-up was almost exclusively on the back of the P3C, a bike they scarcely had in production prior to last year's event. That explains Cervelo's gain over the year before. What explains Trek's loss of 40-plus units? Yes, they have the Equinox TTX, certainly a worthy competitor. But the bike didn't become available until just prior to the race in Kona, so participants in this race had to look elsewhere.

Quintana Roo gained 26 bikes, and climbed to within a hair's breath of 2nd place in the Survey, largely off the success of its all-carbon tri bike, the Lucero (and its progeny, the Caliente and the Seduza). Litespeed's fall from its spot can be attributed to its lack of carbon bikes -- titanium did not appear to do as well this year as it has in times past. Kestrel lost 20 bikes, and perhaps this is due to newer carbon models sucking a bit of oxygen out of the air of what has historically been triathlon's favorite carbon bike.

There are brands to look for next year. Certainly the biggest percentage gainer over the past 12 months is Scott, which went from 16 bikes to 66. Kuota gained 11 to 77, but look for it to do even better next year, with Normann winning the event, and a new model coming on line sometime during the year.

Felt's gain was modest but, again, they had no carbon bike this past season. Look for Felt to enjoy a big increase by next year's Kona. And Orbea did well, increasing two and a half times its '05 total, off the strength of its carbon tri bike, the Ordu.

Guru also enjoyed a healthy increasee, and we kept seeing the Crono crossing our path, its carbon tri entry. Specialized also had a healthy jump-up, from 38 bikes to 58, and was the one brand to enjoy success without a carbon frame.

Look for this trend to continue in 2007. Giant has a mostly carbon Trinity Alliance, Felt and Trek will get back on the wagon with their new carbon tri models, and those who follow this pattern will do well.

It can't be overstated that it's not just carbon that Kona competitors bought in '06. It's tri geometry bikes. Not only were there few new carbon road bikes of any sort (Trek's OCLVs used to rule here), there were few or no Cervelo Soloist carbons or R3s. Few or no new Kestrel Talons. You couldn't just have a carbon bike in your lineup, it had to be a tri-specific geometry. That's what it took in '06, and that's probably what it'll take in '07.

One final note on the Cervelos in this race. Cervelo tallies its bikes in a lot of races, and its chief counter commented about set-ups. While the Cervelo P3Cs tend to have the saddle shifted a bit rearward in some of the IMNA races, with a lot of spacers under the stem, not so in Kona. The saddles on the P3Cs in this race, says Cervelo's Chris Bastie, are universally steeper, and the stems are sitting right on top of the head tubes, with very few spacers between the two.