Triathlon bikes at 2007 Interbike

As regards tri bikes, the only reason this may not seem a landmark Interbike is that all the sneak peaks dulled our senses. Imagine if we all showed up and – wham! – we got our first glimpses of the Specialized S Works, the Jamis Xenith, Cannondale’s new Slice, the retooled Orbea Ordu, Argon 18’s Element 114, Kuota’s Kueen K, and Wilier’s Cento Crono? But I knew about them all before the show, as did most of you.

And there are more coming. You and I only saw the ones ready to be unveiled. I was taken to back rooms and, as long as I promised to keep my mouth shut (and I can) I got to see designs not quite ready for prime time. Be prepared for more bikes like those mentioned above.

The new Ordu (right) departs a bit from its similarity to the P3C and with its Stealth fighter motif pays homage to Kestrel’s Airfoil Pro (below). The Wilier and the Specialized frames look a bit like each other. Otherwise, most of these new bikes owe a lot to Look’s 496 and Cervelo’s P3C. Those two landmark designs were the templates from which Felt borrowed when coming up with its stunning DA introduced last year, and now the floodgates are open. These new bikes, along with those already in existence, mean there are at least two dozen companies having fashioned answers to the P3C.

You’d be wrong to think the tri and TT bikes made by these companies will ride anything alike one another just by looking at them. Any similarity in tube or frame shapes or features implies nothing more than industrial designs reminiscent of one another. To know whether these bikes will function for you, you’ve got to identify your riding style and understand that there are two design schools at play.

Consider the bikes made by the following companies: Teschner, Argon 18, Orbea, Time, Look, Pinarello, Isaac, Scott and Bianchi. These all follow what I call the European school of TT bike design, and I term them thus because the larger European manufacturers almost always employ these geometries. They are characterized by slacker seat angles, typically in the 75- and 76-degree range. They also tend, as a group, to have more road-bike-style steering geometries, and this means head angles of 73 degrees with fork offsets of 43mm and 45mm.

Two years ago, the other “group” consisted only of Cervelo. Last year Trek, Giant, Felt and QR joined in. This year add Cannondale, Specialized, Wilier, Kuota and Jamis to the fold. These companies comprise what I call the North American school of tri and TT geometry, because North American bike maker Quintana Roo started the ball rolling in 1989 and then-Canadian-based Cervelo took over where QR left off. These bikes have seat angles that hover around 78 degrees, with steering geometries that favor head angles of 71.5 or 72 degrees, and fork offsets of 48mm and up.

Neither of these two schools is wrong in what it does, they both simply appeal to different riding styles. Among pro athletes, you might say that those with first names starting with C (Widoff, Legh, McCormack, Alexander, Lieto, Brown) tend to do well riding Euro style bikes (the occasional C, Mr. Walton for example, will be best off on his steepish Felt).

What we found when we did an exhaustive analysis of Kona’s riders was that the better athletes, as a group, trended steep. If you were in Kona in 2005 and you rode a steep config you were joined by about 1000 other athletes. If you rode shallow you were among about 600 who chose that set up. Those who chose steep-angled configurations rode, ran and, parenthetically, swam faster than those who rode shallow. Men, for example, finished their Hawaiian Ironman about 15 minutes faster if they were riding steep angles, and the average age for both steep and shallow riding men was 41 years. Steep riding women were faster by about the same percentage. This isn’t to say that riding steep made them better, just that steeper seat angles and faster finishing times were associated one with another. (And, of course, as a group they tended to have a first name starting with a letter other than C.)

The style of bike chosen by these steep-riding athletes is the design employed by those builders in the North American group. The reason for the difference in steering geometries is that the North American style bikes, with their shallower head angles and longer offsets, grant these bikes extra front-center, that is, as a group they tend to feature more distance between the bottom bracket axle and front wheel axle. These bikes are made this way because their steeper seat angles pitch their riders forward, and pushing the front wheel out in front of the rider grants him a better weight displacement.

There is not necessarily an either/or associated with these companies. Giant, Kuota and Quintana Roo all are in a process of change, with older models part or all the way along a gradient toward the Euro style, and new models like the Trinity Alliance, Kilo and Tequilo, and Kueen K all squarely of the North American style.

Of course there are very fast athletes that ride shallow, and if I was to pick the perfect bike for perennial podium finisher Cam Brown, it would be one in that Euro style, and in fact he rides a Scott. Likewise Craig Alexander, and he rides the fabulous looking Orbea Ordu, maybe the perfect bike for him.

Conversely, Kuota did build a bike – the Kueen K – that perfectly suits the riding style of Normann Stadler, and Normann would have a hard time finding success on a European style tri geometry, European though he is.

Faris Al Sultan now finds himself aboard a new Cannondale he will certainly love. I understand that Faris was quite reticent to give up his current-model Slice Six13. I took the new all-carbon 08 Slice for a fairly hard 15-mile spin out at Nevada’s Red Rock Canyon last week. Note to Faris: you’ve been riding Two Buck Chuck for the past year. Now you’re riding Opus One, and you finally know what nice is. This new Slice went from Euro style tri geometry to North American style, and it’s the nicest riding tri bike I’ve been on in some time. Faris rides in a style perfectly suited to this bike.

This will be the first season since the advent of aero bars where more than a dozen companies in each camp make high quality bikes from which triathletes can choose. Add to these bikes fine boutique brands like Kestrel, Javelin, Blue, Beyond Fabrications, Velo Vie, Valdora, and the custom makers like Guru, Lynskey, Elite, Calfee and others, and the bike world is every triathlete’s oyster. With such a selection of wonderful models, however, it would be a shame if a triathlete makes his selection based on hype, or cosmetics, or what his LBS carries, or what his favorite pro rides, instead of what bike best fits his riding style.