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...::: ATLAS ROCKEFELLER :::...
PREVALENT FEATURE: Strong as an ox / richer than God. ALSO: Qualifies for Ironman and/or age-group Worlds.
I used to live in Southern California's Orange County -- Irvine to be exact. My bike riding partners were Bill Leach, Bob Belzer, Bob Cuyler, Dan Neyenhuis, and a few others. Every one of these guys has been on the age group Worlds podium most of them multiple times, some on the top spot on the dais. Our training ride? Twenty-five miles in about an hour, sometimes faster, sort of a team time trial. That was it.
The thing about Bill Leach, who was widely considered the world's best master's triathlete for several years, and who at age-50 could still get off the bike with the leaders in most pro short-course events, was that he could not ride just any bike. He was not only powerful, he was big. Leach was an Olympic kayaker before taking up triathlon, and a very good swimmer prior to that. The power in his arms and chest was matched by the power in his legs, he was not a spinner, and a lot of force came down on those pedals.
For many years Bill's bike was the old, original Kestrel 4000 (in truth, we all rode them). It was a wise choice. When I was a bike manufacturer, and I sponsored athletes, a consequence of this sponsorship was the athlete's trading me their old tri bikes in place of the new ones I gave out. I did this to acquire my competitor's bikes, and I had some medieval torture machines of my own design with which I destroyed these bikes. Chief among them in strength was the Kestrel 4000 (below). You just could not harm or move or stress that bike. It was bulletproof. In terms of stiffness and strength, in every way it was the king.
Which leads us to 2007, instead of 20 years ago, when the Kestrel 4000 was in production. What are today's analogs? The thing about our current era's bikes is that materials have gotten quite exotic, and for silly reasons the question of an article's weight has expressed itself unnecessarily on bike and component design. Truly, guys that are putting out big power, and standing on pedals with 160, 180, or 200 pounds of body weight, need frames and parts to do more than offer 16 total bike pounds.
As a bike manufacturer we only had one athlete for whom we ever needed to build special bikes, and that was Spencer Smith. He weighed 170 pounds and was very powerful and he punished our frames. So we needed to put him aboard a beefier chassis which, to us, meant a chainstay and down tube that were in excess of what we normally built. But I digress...
Today, the burden on a rider in this category is to find bikes and parts that are geometrically appropriate, yet offer the heft and structure needed to support extraordinary weight and power. Of course, it's hard to know how each person fitting this profile rides his bike. More in the Chris Lieto mid-seat-angled mold? Or quite steep, like Spence? Or hyper-steep, like Jurgen Zack? This makes a difference, because today's tri bikes do not tend to have replaceable seat posts. You have to first determine your optimized fit coordinates, and then determine your available geometric options. Jurgen Zack couldn't ride an Orbea, because it's not steep enough. On the other hand, Chris Lieto might find a Cervelo P3C too long for him, and an Orbea would be a much better fit.
Fortunately, Atlas Rockefeller is also richer than God, so we have no price-specific hedge around our available options. All that established, here goes...
Perhaps the obvious first answer is the Kestrel Airfoil Pro. Kestrel has not lost its ability to engineer. People seem to forget that Kestrel is probably 15 years ahead of most carbon bike builders when it comes to its knowledge of what goes into making monocoque carbons. In point of fact, the person we're profiling here is probably a great candidate for that very frame material. Kestrel made bikes 20 years ago that didn't break, and it still makes bikes that don't break. What a pedigree this company has. One forgets that during the late '80s and early '90s many asked whether Trek would ever make its OCLV as good as a Kestrel.
Of course the Airfoil Pro has no seat tube, and in fact you'd be surprised how "hot" this tube is. In your traditional double-diamond bike frame the seat tube comes under quite a bit of stress. So, when you take this tube out, you've got to beef up the other tubes in order to absorb the work that seat tube performs. This adds weight to the Airfoil Pro. So what. We're talking a half-pound here. What is this to you?
Furthermore, this is one of the few high-end frames that accepts a round seat post, so you've got some wiggle room when it comes to how the bike is going to fit. The geometry is otherwise pretty darned good as tri bikes go. You'll spend between $4000 and $5500 depending on how this bike it outfitted. But I'd be careful about your choices of aerobars and stems and such. I'd probably go with separate pieces -- not integrated one-piece designs -- so that I could choose my bars and stems with an eye toward the strength required in each piece. You'll probably want your diameters to be oversized, certainly a 1 1/8" steerer, and maybe a 31.8mm pursuit bar. These are specs that came out of the MTB world, and are generally considered stronger. Choose your fork, your pursuit bar, your stem, your armrests with an eye toward strength and solidity.
Speaking of companies making carbon bikes for decades, the second bike that comes to mind is the Trek Equinox 9.9. Like Kestrel, Trek built quite a versatile geometry into its tri bike, and they spent considerable effort at making the bike very laterally stiff and, in the overall, very strong. There are some powerful riders on Trek's Discovery team -- the likes of Pavel Padrnos and George Hincapie -- and it's this tri bike the team has taken to riding for their timed events. The 9.9 is the better-equipped bike, with Dura Ace, and a price tag of $5500 or so.
I spent the Spring with a Scott Plasma on the property, and was quite impressed with how this company went about solving certain engineering problems. I wrote about it, and you'll read my comments both positive and negative. The two things that stick out: this is a less versatile geometry, you'll need to have a bike position that parallel's the intentions of this bike's designers; and you'll probably have to change the aero bars. Ain-alar Juhansen rides the Plasma, and if there is anyone who fits the mold of Atlas Rockefeller (well, at least the Atlas part), it's him. But you'll want the CR1 Plasma Team, of course, as you will not be put off by its $7000 price tag.
What about bikes like Cervelo's P3C, Felt's DA, Look's 496 Tri, Orbea's Ordu, Time's RXR? In the case of the first two on that list, you have one specific geometric style. Cervelo and Felt make steeper-geometry bikes. Certainly hammers are aboard them, specifically Bjorn Andersson and any number of CSC riders in the first case, and Craig Walton and Andy Potts in the second. But I don't know that rock-hard lateral and torsional stiffness is the specific intent of these companies, to the degree it is with Trek. Jordan Rapp and his Equinox were at the compound over the past three weeks, and one is not bowled over, ahem, by the bike's lightness. Clearly, Trek's intent was to engineer a proper bike, not something light-at-any-cost.
Look, Time and Orbea all fall into that second geometric category (into which you could throw Colnago, Pinarello, indeed most of the Euro makers steeped in road race tradition). They're made shallow. You need to ride this way in order to ride these bikes successfully. Also realize that in some cases the stated theme of the company may not suit your needs. For example, here is what Look says of its 496 Tri: "To precisely comply with triathlon practice, weight and stiffness have been reduced." Compare that with a Trek head engineer's boast that the Equinox TTX frame is 40% stiffer in the lateral plane than [another popular carbon tri bike]. Clearly, these companies have a different view of a triathlete's needs, and the subject of this overview will take note of these diverging views.
What about custom bike makers? There are three that come to mind. One is BMC's TT01. I bring this up because there is no way you can talk about "cost no object" bikes for triathletes without mentioning this one. This bike is billed as a custom, built just for you, one at a time, to your specs. That's true in one respect, that they are built one at a time, and there are customizable in many ways. You can add some layers of pre-preg to the layup, to make it stiffer and beefier. The stem and seat mast is built into the frame, and the length, pitch, angle of each is definitely customizable.
On the other hand, what you actually get is a variation of a single size, that is, you get your stem, your seat mast, your lay-up, built into one frame size. For those who are familiar with stack and reach, our own geometric esperanto, the length of every BMC TT01 is essentially the same for every person, as expressed in its wheelbase or front/center, assuming we understand this bike correctly (and it is very hard to wrest tech info upon which you can depend from retailers who carry this brand). This affects how your custom will handle, and whether it will respond as you expect and intend.
It might go without saying, but to fit and geometry buffs like us, we have a hard time recommending spending $15,000 on a bike built around this paradigm. Still, Paolo Savoldelli and Eddy Mazzoleni just finished first and second in the final Giro 43k flattish ITT, so the bike has something special going for it. But, the bike is more their style (you can't get the seat angle to go steeper than about 76 degrees), and probably built closer to their specific body dimensions.
There are two other custom builders who offer bikes worthy of Atlas Rockefeller. One is Guru, specifically that company's Crono. This is currently the only true custom you can get in carbon with shaped tubes. This is a very pretty bike, and quite a popular one, considering its $7000 price tag (depending on the parts you choose). As this is not a monocoque, my intuition tells me that its ability to withstand the twisting and torquing that primarily occurs in a lateral plane will not match that of, say, Trek's Equinox TTX. But I've never ridden a Crono, never tested it, have seen no testing, so I don't know. And even if it doesn't, the question is whether this bike will be stiff and strong enough for you.
Finally, Quintana Roo offers its TiPhoon in custom, and this is another $7000 bike. What's bad about it? There is a limit as to how short you can build this bike's head tube, and if you're under 5'10" you threaten to bump up against this limit. This is a very fine titanium bike. Of those sexy aero features you tend to find in the best-conceived production tri bikes, the Tiphoon incorporates more of them than any of the customs made in any frame material.
WHICH DEALERS CARRY THESE BIKES: This topic is covered in our Dealer Survey.
