Here is a company that has awakened, and smelled the coffee. Nay, the double espresso, and has smelled it "big time," as Vice President Cheney might say.

TRINITY ALLIANCE

After some years of dorking around at 75-degrees of seat angle, Giant has a tri bike for '07, and how. It's the expansion of the Trinity series both down in price and up in utility. This new frame is the 78-degree seat angle Trinity Alliance, and it represents new thinking in tri geometry for Giant, and it's also the multisport expression of a new frame technology.

This is technology introduced to multisporters, instead of hand-me-down technology that the roadies, MTBers, BMXers, freerides and commuters got first. Alliance is the term describing this frame construction, and it's descriptive of frame made of carbon on top and aluminum on the bottom, sort of like a running shoe's EVA midsole, for comfort, attached seamlessly to a denser, harder outsole below. The idea is to try to marry aluminum's lighter, stiffer properties to carbon's ability to damp and absorb.

The Alliance's seat stays, seat tube and top tube are carbon, the head tube, down tube and chain stays are aluminum. The seam between the two materials is indistinguishable. Giant boasts fifty or so grams in savings, along with a laterally stiffer ride.

That explains the frame material(s), but that's only half the story, or perhaps less than half. The bigger newsflash is Giant's buy-in to what we around here consider triathlon's optimized geometry. When it comes to making a bike that's going to fit right and handle well while the rider's in or out of the aero position, the Trinity Alliance has it all. The seat angle is 78 degrees, and Giant's adjustable seat post means a rider can get from 75 to 81 degrees of effective seat angle.

The beauty of this bike is not simply the range of angles available, but the fact that is optimized at 78 degrees. Should one consider this bike's size L, roughly a 59cm bike, its front/center will measure around 64.9cm by our calc, interpolated from other given dimensions. This compares to our calc of 61.8cm of front/center for Giant's Trinity 1, its very nice existing carbon bike successfully ridden by Michellie Jones among others. Notwithstanding Michellie's successful performances, this new geometry will allow for a more stable, predictable ride should the athlete choose to ride along the steeper end of the gradient.

The Trinity Alliance will also handle a slight bit more slowly, with 59cm of trail instead of the 56cm found in the Trinity I, and this is simply due to the new bike's 72.5 degrees of head angle versus the older version's 73 degrees (each has a fork with 45mm of offset).

Now comes the kicker: The Trinity Alliance comes with a pair of nice price tags, $2000 compete and $3000 complete, depending on the groupkit chosen. The cheaper version (Alliance 1) is your typical mishmash of Shimano 105 with Ultegra, Tektro brake calipers, and FSA cramk and Xero wheels. The aerbar system is a completely fine Easton Aeroforce clip-on, and a lot of Giant-branded stem, saddle and so forth. None of the spec is unrideable or incongruous, the bike is completely fine out of the box.

Conversely, the $3000 version, which is the same frame in blue and with more expensive parts, strains to justify its worth. Let's put it this way: we'd be talking up its value were it not for the existence of its $2000 cousin. The upscale version of the Alliance (the Alliance 0) is pretty much Ultegra throughout (Dura Ace rear derailleur), with Mavic Cosmic Elite wheels. Is this worth an extra thou? Debatable. Enterprising retailers are going to buy this bike, yank the Cosmics and stick Bontragers or Velomaxes in their place, sell it for $2799, and resell the Cosmics stand-alone for $450.

From the consumer's point of view, we'd rather buy the $2000 version, pay an extra $50 to have the retailers replace the FSA Gossamer cranks with a set of Gossamer Compact Mega-Exo, up-sell myself my saddle of choice, spend an extra $350 on a second set of training wheels, rubber and cassette, and for $2500 I'd have the right bike with the right gearing, personalized saddle, and two sets of wheels.

However you want to strategize the purchase, these new Trinity Alliances represent a huge step in exactly the right direction for Giant.

TRINITY 1 & 0

These are more expensive bikes than the Alliance models above, at $3500 and $5500 respectively. The groupkit for the cheaper version (Trinity 1, orange and black, immediately below) corresponds about exactly to that of the more expensive Alliance, just a few changes here and there. The $5500 version (Trinity 0, gray and black, farther below) comes with Mavic Elite Carbone SLs and a lot of Dura Ace.

These bikes are what you might call the UCI legal bikes, that is, they're designed for those who need to time trial in a UCI legal position, and for those retailers who just tell Giant they need their bikes to have UCI-legal geometry, but really this is just an excuse for these retailers to hold on to positioning views that are 20 years outdated. Pretty much you could say the same thing for Trek and its TTT bikes that even the Discovery Team will no longer ride (they're riding Trek's Equinox TTX tri bikes). Some retailers just want the old geometry.

One can also see the convergence in thinking among various companies. Consider the front of the head tube in the older Giant Trinity mold above, versus the newer Trinity Alliance against Cervelo's P2C. This rounder, fatter, head tube grants the ability to make a shorter head tube for the smaller sized bikes, and it's the sort of thing you'll see from Kuota, Kestrel and other carbon tri bike makers.

That said, if 75 degrees is where you want to ride, then this is a bike worth considering. Keep in mind, though, that there are some additional geometric differences. These Trinities have 37.5cm of chainstay, next to the 39.0cm of chainstay in the newer Alliances, making the new bikes a bit more stable and offering somewhat better shifting and chainlines.

The newer Alliances also offer a wider range, and more rationally graded, head tube lengths. The Alliance in size large has a 14.5cm head tube versus the older Trinity's 13.9cm head tube, incongruous with the converse relationship in seat angles (it's the steeper bike that ought to have the shorter head tube). Also, the Alliance's smaller sizes offer much shorter head tubes. In fact, the entire range of S, M and L sizes offer head tubes that vary only 1.8cm, while the four sizes of Alliance models range from 10.0cm to 14.5cm in total head tube lengths.

The older Trinity models are, of course, entirely carbon, accounting for their higher prices. But is all-carbon a better or worse technology than the new Alliance frames? Alas, we just don't know. A Slowtwitch road test is coming, as is a chat with Pete Coulson, Michellie Jones' husband and manager. Once we, and Michellie, have put some miles on the Alliance we'll know more.