Thanks, at least in part, to the folks at Strava and Zwift, power is king to all the geeks. I would say this is perhaps even more so than watts saved in the wind tunnel. Power is something we see everywhere. Even if you don’t have it on your bike, Strava just makes it up for you. It’s so sacred that some pros won’t even share it.

Power started to come into cycling in the late 1980’s. It began with wired rear-wheel hubs, worked its way into cranks and Bluetooth and ANT+ data transmission, and then moved into pedals. It’s become one of the most recorded data sources next to HR for all things performance.

Like anything we have in our quiver, it is something that can be a huge help and, at the same time, can be a huge deterrent if not used correctly. So, who is leading when it comes to the source of your power?

Assioma made huge inroads on Garmin (compared to 2023 Kona), while Quarq remains the top dog. 2023 is in blue, and 2024 is in orange above.

Now, moving on to the men’s 2024 race, it appears that men have a larger appetite to have power-based cranks than pedals, compared to the women’s race here in 2023. We see from the 2024 stats that 62% of power meters were crank-based and 38% were pedal-based. The women last year were almost the exact opposite, with 30.1% crank power and 69.9% pedal power. And last month in Nice, there were even more pedal-based power meter’s on women’s bikes than there were at 2023 Kona.

The total breakdown was not all too out of the norm. We generally see the cranks win, but I will say that over time, that percentage is shrinking as we have more power pedal companies in the mix. With everyone having an N+1 bike need, it’s the most affordable way to get power on all your bikes. This is probably why Assioma is gaining so much traction on Garmin — they are about 30% less expensive for equivalent products.

The bigger question is not if, but when will Shimano and SRAM come out with a power pedal?

The post Who is the King of Power from Kona 2024? first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

It’s that fun time of year again when we get to count up the results of the Kona count, share the data, and put our opinions next to it.

Once again, Zipp owns the most significant piece of the wheel count pie. And they did it with very little help from others.

Here is the data for wheels from the 2024 Kona bike count.

This count gives us a total of 1972 wheels that were countable from our expert counters. The missing wheels are 100% non-identifiable wheels and the fifty-ish pros that we do not put into the count. I would like to note that the two superstar ladies who counted wheels are the best in the business. So if the two of them couldn’t figure out the wheel as it went by… well, it is what it is.

Now, with that disclaimer, we can all probably agree that with the law of averages, the count is what it is, and if you disagree. Please let me know if you would like to help next time we really do have a great time.

Here are my quick thoughts on the data. DT Swiss, who came in 2nd place, has made the intelligent choice to attach themselves to Canyon and others. These OEM partnerships paid huge dividends by putting wheels on bikes. But it also tells me that customers like the wheels, because as we know: the dudes spend big money on bikes. Just look at ZIPP. They have minimal OEM partnerships with Triathlon bike brands and continue to lead, so people continue replacing OEM specs with ZIPP wheels, although that lead is shrinking from years past.

HED had massive success with the count this year, and much of that is due to the continued success of the rear “Non-disc,” but almost a disc Hed Jet 180. The wheel was brought to life within 2 months of the 2022 two-day Kona race and, in 2024, there were 48 riders using the 180. That total alone is better than 17 of the wheel companies present. The wheel also set the new Kona Bike course record under Sam Laidlow in 3:57:22. Looking at this wheel, I’m starting to think the rule of no discs at Kona is time for a revisit.

Bontrager was in the mix in 4th, but it surprises me as we had 338 Treks, and considering they currently only spec Bontrager wheels and have for a while, this means the Speed Concepts are either older, many guys are jumping ship for other wheel brands, or they are buying frames alone and building up their own components.

ENVE rounded out the World Championship podium in 5th. The company lost a lot of its OEM business and volume numbers when it went into the bike manufacturer business years ago. However, it is on its way back to a healthy return to its roots in triathlon and rebuilding its D-to-C and OEM wheel business. We have more stories about that coming up. We shall see what happens with its efforts in the coming years. Having had many conversations with the brand, I can say that they are committed to the cause.

The biggest loser of the day was Shimano, which I find sad. Mainly because they genuinely have a better product than most people ahead of them. But when you turn your back on marketing to the people, sales, or the lack thereof, starts to follow. This also could be that Shimano has yet to bring wheels into the D to C market like most of these other companies, and with the triathlon market going heavily D to C, this may be something for them to really consider as dealers aren’t helping. Still, with all the nay sayers with hookless, they are one of the very few large companies making pure hooked carbon fiber wheels. It’s a little odd that a company with such a large market cap is neck and neck with Profile Design in the wheel department.

The post ZIPP Owns The Wheel Count of Kona 2024 first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Canyon has won the Men’s Ironman World Championship bike count for the second year in a row. This shows that the company’s marketing engine doesn’t just reach Europe.

Photo Credit Talbot Cox

The post Canyon Wins Kona 2024 Bike Count first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

FRAME – Quintana Roo V-PRi

QR is known for its custom paint options, and this one is no different.

Cockpit – Drag2Zero .66 The non-UCI legal front end is Drag2Zero’s flagship setup. It’s clean, and unlike some others, we have seen it has no crazy 3rd part 3D custom parts that are duct taped together.

Matt will run a single rear Gorilla XT bottle and ISM PN 3.0 saddle.

Shimano is all around the drivetrain here. 56-44T for the front chainrings and 11-30 on the rear cassette. Matt also uses a crank-based power meter with 170cm arms.

DT Swiss ARC 1400 80mm front and rear. While he will ride the same depth wheel, he will ride different tires and sizes. There’s a Continental Aero 111 700 x 26c in the front, Continental GP500 Tour 700 x 28c in the rear.

Thanks to QR’s triathlon non-UCI roots, Matt will have plenty of storage for the long haul, although while discovering the tire plugs instead of a tube, I did ask Matt if gravel was in his future.

You can also find more information on Matt here on his Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Matt Hanson (@matthansontri)

The post Bikes of Kona 2024: Matt Hanson’s QR V-PRi first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

We stopped some of the top gravel pros before they ventured onto tomorrow’s race course for Life Time’s Big Sugar event.

ISABEL KING

Frame – Scott Addict Gravel RC

Drivetrain – Shimano GRX 2x 48/31

Wheels – Shimano GRX WH-RX880

Tires– 45 Panaracer X1 plus

Power – 4iii

Personal touch

Daily Reminders

CHASE WARK

Frame – Lauf Seigla

Tires – Continental Race Kings 2.2”

Cockpit – Vision Metron 5d ACR integrated 3k

Wheels – HED Emporia

Drivetrain – Sram Quarq 1x 48

HEATHER JACKSON

Frame – Canyon Grail CFR

Drivetrain – Shimano Mix Dura-ace 50-34 / GRX(wants the power)

Grips – Shimano GRX

Moto – Dirt Brigade

Cockpit – Canyon Grail custom

Tires – IRC Boken 45c

Alexey Vermeulen

Frame – Enve MOG

Drivetrain – Shimano Mix Dura-ace 50-34 / GRX(wants the power)

Grips – Shimano GRX

Tires – Kenda rush 2.2 up front, Kenda prototype 50mm rear

Cockpit – Enve SES AR One-Piece

Custom – #noflats

The post The Many Bikes of Big Sugar first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

We are in Bentonville for the Lifetime Series Final Grand Prix race of 2024: Big Sugar. Here’s an in-depth look at Kyle Trudeau’s steed for the race, a Ventum GS1.

DRIVETRAIN

Shimano GRX 1 X 12 Mechanical with Wolf Tooth 48 Chainring

Out back, you find Shimano’s GRX RD-RX822-SGS

He’s also using a 10-51 rear cassette for all the speed — both up and down.

TIRES AND WHEELS

Shimano GRX WH-RX880 is here.

They’re wrapped by Continental Terra Speed 700x50mm tires.

POWER AND PEDALS

Shimano 105 Left Crank Arm (170)

At the end you’ll find Shimano XTR pedals.

BARS AND STEM

It’s an FSA 40cm bar mated to a Pro 130mm Stem.

SADDLE OF CHOICE

Specialized Power 143mm

The post Kyle Trudeau’s Big Sugar Ride: Ventum GS1 first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Every time we do the old famous Bike Count, it requires a lot of things and a lot of skilled people, all of whom are either volunteers or “voluntold” to do so. These fine humans, the day before the biggest race of the year, get to (instead of planning and resting up for the hectic day to come) hang out in the sun and spend hours hyper-focused on counting bikes, wheels, pedals, power meters, etc. So for about 8 hours, they and we get to catch up and try to have some fun doing it. And without these people, the count would never happen. I’m convinced that the bike count is the real reason we have the famous TGINR Party.

The count’s history goes back some 20 years. And because of that, the tools matched and have evolved with the times. They used to have clipboards, pens, paper, and sheets that looked like this.

The day would be filled with frantic counting and making sure you could catch a pee break without missing numbers. Then, everyone would gather around as we started counting the chicken scratch. Wet pieces of paper with ink all over were effectively turned into totals and then turned into percentages. Then, that was turned into data records and new articles. It was indeed a product of passion.

And for the most part, it was a somewhat bulletproof system (because of the people, not the process). Time passed, and the people who knew how to do it stopped going to Kona. Ironman was, at times, challenging to work with on access, and then all of a sudden, in 2022, we had two counts to do: Wednesday’s count for Thursday’s race, and Friday’s count for Saturday’s race, and the whole history of data was different. I left the massive 2-day adventure in 2022 and started to think on how we collectively do this more effectively. Starting last year, not only did we have a count that doubled in location, but it was 100% gender-specific and also geographically inspired.

For Kona 2023, I showed up with digital form links that allowed people to kill the paper and the manual counting. Ironman gave us a dedicated wifi access point with our own password, so those who wanted to use the digital form did what they did best: stared at their phones, clicked away, and then left 5 mins after they were done. Meanwhile the software spit out the results. We still had some of the “OG’S” that wanted to use pen and paper, so they counted in analog and we hung out after and helped tally the numbers. And by the skin of our teeth, we had our annual bike count. And 2023 was the most odd set of numbers from the norm we had ever seen. Why? Because for the first time in the history of the bike count, it was 100% gender specific, we could now start to understand what men and women valued most regarding their bike equipment.

About 4 months ago I really wanted to make the bike count a big thing again. We all did: the media, the industry, and, of course, our readers. So we went all in on it and committed to the process and committed to making it happen. Now it’s no secret that Nice isn’t as popular as Kona; everything about that race is just smaller. From the expo to the number of participants to, well, everything. That also rings true for the people that are willing (and can) do the count right. Only a few people on planet earth are willing to stand around for 6-8 hours that can actually see what type of saddle someone is riding and be able to record that in the 1-2 secs they have to do it in.

So we needed to tighten up what we knew we could do from a person counting perspective, but also, we needed to look at the data and figure out anything we needed to cut. As in, data that simply doesn’t matter anymore, or isn’t relevant. Looking back at the decisions we made for the count, we likely made mistakes on two things (maybe more, but these stick out). First, rim versus disc brake counts, and secondly, we shouldn’t have killed Merida from the bike count, even though they can’t really be sold in the US.

Consoldation = new important catagory

Now, as for removing bike brands — the dead bikes. What is a dead bike, you might ask? They made up about 5.2% of the total bike count at the World Championship in Nice. When looking at how we could do the bike count better, we realized we had to streamline things. Remember: less options = more accurate count. Looking at the data, bikes have the widest variety with 38 options of bike brands on the original count list. We felt that 11 of those shouldn’t be included anymore. Why? These are companies that, although they might still be in business, their focus has changed. TT or triathlon bikes are either not part of their consumer offerings, or they simply don’t focus on it anymore. This saves the counter time and energy, but it also creates a new and important category: dead bikes.

Those brands we decided to no longer include are:

1. Kuota
2. Fuji
3. Merida
4. Boardman
5. Guru
6. Garneau
7. Kestrel
8. Cipollini
9. Planet X
10. Stevens
11. Blue

Now I know that Cipollini makes TT bikes, and Merida makes both a TT and triathlon bike, but the count of each has never really been meaningful to the totals. But after some additional information, I will put Merida back in for Kona.

Why does this matter? It matters because it shows us the unique purchasing choices of men and women. And after Kona we will be able to start to dive into that little bit more. But the fact that people are riding (as a whole) more bikes combined that aren’t even in our business anymore, versus some of the bike companies that are investing heavily into the endurance space is something to talk about.

Let’s take, for example, Cube. We have four times as many women riding bikes that are from companies no longer in business (at all) or in business in triathlon and are, at minimum, 4-6 years old, versus choosing to ride the bike that 2023 World Champion Lucy Charles-Barclay is riding and has been talking about for years now. Why is that? What is Cube doing wrong with its messaging, or design, for women? If we want women to be successful in this sport (which we do), we collectively have to be working towards helping them in a more significant way. And now one way we can do is within the data of the bike count.

With the ongoing relationship we have with tech and Ironman, we will be able to do more with less. That also means we’ll be able to cover more data and trends. We are also hoping this process, that as we refine it, anyone can use it for other races. We as well as other media outlets are looking forward to getting to Kona for what will be the first year where the combined resources will have data from both men’s and women’s races. And we’ll also have complete data, for the first time, after venues have flipped for each gender.

What will change? What will look the same? And we learned a lot from our first live count article, and we have that all sorted too.

The post 20+ Years of IMWC Bike Counts: What’s Changing, and the New Dead Bikes of Nice and Kona first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Everyone thinks they understand Kona until they go to Kona. It’s just hot and humid, right? People who live in Arizona and ride in 110° assume it’s the same as if you’re on the Queen K. If you’re  riding on the east coast in Northern New York, that;s really hot and humid, I got this, its the same. But then you get to Kona and that’s the day you learn that it’s not the same. It’s just different. You don’t know her until you meet her.

Professional American triathlete Ben Kanute is no different. He’s never raced in Kona; he’s only done two Ironman distance races, and so when he told me at the beginning of this year that his sole focus was to win Kona, I kind of rolled my eyes and chuckled inside a little bit. Then, as a good friend and person in the industry who is American and wants to see an American win again, I said, “OK.” I then pulled up my big boy pants and asked how I could help? I didnt hear much from Ben about it. He was probably a little pissed at the eye roll. But hey this is sport, and what doesn’t fuel the fire lets the fire go out.

When he told me he was doing a camp, I assumed he would at least have a chance to realize that Kona is not just hot, humid, and windy — it’s Kona. Ben’s 2024 hasn’t exactly gone to plan (yet). He went to some early season races and, to be honest, he got his butt kicked. His plans for winning the best of the best was not looking good. He was jumping into the T100 series and just getting left in the dust, coming out in the top swim spots but losing time on the bike and getting passed on runs, finishing 14th in Miami, DNF at Singapore, 12th in San Francisco, 2nd in Mont Tremblant, and then DNF in London.

Around that time Zipp reached to us and asked us to come to the ARC wind tunnel to do a feature on Ben.

To recap that story, Ben went to Indy as a short-course athlete and left as a man who was ready, in my opinion, to compete in an Ironman. The wind tunnel trip taught Ben and his team exactly what we hoped it would teach him. It taught him he could, positionally, move up and out without adding drag. This also allowed him to open his hips and decrease the strain on his lower back. It taught him that TT helmets are way more aero than road bike helmets and that even a specific type of calf sleeves were a little faster than his skin.

But what it didn’t teach him was whether or not those things were going to be 100% translatable for him personally in Hawaii. And the only thing that was going to teach him that was personal experience there. So Ben and his coach Jim Vance did just that. They went over and spent eight days putting together the largest training block that Ben had ever done. And ultimately figure out whether the things they learned in the tunnel were transferable into the big day in Kona.

They wanted to look at his position, particularly with the new aero bar system, and making sure that it was not only comfortable, but actually worked at all. When you go from 5° tilt to a 15° tilt on the aero bar, a common sense practical question comes up: are your arms going to slide down the bars when it’s 100° out and you’re tired, sweaty, and pouring water all over yourself at every ad station on the bike? Would those little rubber pieces on the bottom act like they’re supposed to?

Public Service announcement. Ben will have a white TT Helmet for Kona

• Are you going to be able to handle the crosswinds after the turnaround of Hawi, where you have the ability to go 50MPH into a 30-mile-an-hour crosswind?
• Can you handle a front 858NSW wheel all the time?
• Does the new TT helmet work for you? Does it give you the ventilation you need? Does it allow you to get water inside without risking the front cover coming off?
• Do you take the time to put on calf sleeves in T1? Do you want to wear them in the swim?

Ben ended up doing a 30+ hour training week in the unique conditions of Kona and ended it with an Ironman simulated race day adventure.

That day included:

Swim: 2.5 miles, 48:49 time, 1:06/100 yards

3.5 hour bike
86.5 miles, 24.8 MPH average
276 average watts, 203 TSS, .76 IF, 1.07 VI

Run stats are secret

Then a 90-minute run (3 x 10 mins @ race pace, then cruise).

As we all know, that isn’t the full distance, but they calculated it as if it was equal to it from a training perspective based on the level of load Ben was under.

They started the day about an hour and a half after what would be the race start so that Ben could be doing the bulk of the session in the hottest parts of the day, It did exactly what it was supposed to simulate both mental or physical pain and fatigue.

The only thing that I felt like we failed at was the number of pit stop rests Ben took. At the same time, we also didn’t want to put Ben at risk, or mess with the locals on the Queen K as we simulated handing bottles off to somebody that was going 20 – 30 MPH on a bike. So we did our best to find situations where we could pull way over to the side to make sure traffic was never impeded. However, we failed a little at the end when we just ran out of parking spots while Ben was in the final stretch of his run. We still, however, pulled way over and gave people enough space and hopefully a little bit of laughter while some 5’10 white kid stood on a scale, half-dressed in spandex, waiting to eat his salt and vinegar chips.

You don’t know Kona until you meet her, and Ben took the time to introduce himself to her and ask her for help in his quest for glory in two weeks.

Grab your popcorn and enjoy the Kona Movie We follow Ben on a run before the big day, the big day, and end with a bit of FPV run the following morning.

The post You Don’t Know Kona Until You Meet Her first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Life Time announced key changes to their 2025 Grand Prix Series today. While the events arm of the company is reducing the race series, it is simultaneously listening to professional athletes, partners, and logistics team to go deeper.

The 2025 Grand Prix will kick off, like usual, at the key industry event, Sea Otter, on April 11th, 2025. Athletes will then have a total of six events to collect their top 5 results for series scoring points. There will be an even 3/3 split on gravel and mountain bike events. We are still waiting on prize money details for 2025 and will update as soon as we can confirm. Ultimately the 2025 Grand Prix is still putting gravel, its pros, and its “spirit” on the map.

The 2025 events are as follows:

• Life Time Sea Otter Classic Gravel presented by Continental 
• Life Time Unbound Gravel 200 
• Life Time Leadville Trail 100 MTB presented by Kenetik 
• Life Time Chequamegon Mountain Bike Festival 
• Life Time Little Sugar MTB 
• Life Time Big Sugar Gravel 

Notably, two key events are no longer included in the Grand Prix. Those are Crusher in the Tushar and the Rad Dirt Fest. However, Life Time remains committed to those two events and expects to grow them in a different manner.

The details on the points system for 2025 will be announced soon. Here’s what we do know:

• Only the 22 men and 22 women selected before the first event will appear on the leaderboard before Unbound.
• After Unbound, the leaderboard will be updated and rescored to:
  1. Remove any athletes’ points who drop from the series through Life Time Unbound
  2. Include selected Wild Card athletes’ results for Sea Otter and Unbound.
  3. After the completion of the 4th event, each athletes’ lowest scored race will be removed from the scoring to reflect their “drop” race. This will give the most accurate standings going into the last event.

Here are some of the key rules and regulations for professional athletes for next year’s racing.

• 25 men and 25 women will be selected for the 2025 Life Time Grand Prix
  • 22 men and 22 women will be selected and announced on 11/7/2024
  • 6 Wild Card spots (3 Men and 3 Women) will be announced after Unbound Gravel on May 31, 2025. To be selected for a Wild Card, athletes will have had to have applied for the 2025 LTGP and compete in the 2025 editions of Sea Otter and Unbound Gravel 200.
  • Additional wild card spots, above the 6 mentioned above, may open up if any of the 22 men and 22 women drop out. These additional wild card spots will be determined by Life Time.
• All prospective participants must fill out the application between October 14, 2024 and October 28 at 11:59 PST order to be considered.
• Crucially, the 2025 LTGP will have no auto acceptance.

Every event in the Life Time Grand Prix series will provide separate starts for the respective elite fields. Participants must start 5 of the 6 events in order to be eligible for an overall prize — so it will truly require showing up to all of the events. Example – if you start only 4 events of the series, you are not eligible for Life Time Grand Prix prize money (DNFs will hurt your standing in the series, but will not disqualify you from the series). Athletes will be removed from the series standings as soon as they become ineligible.

The final event in the series, Life Time Big Sugar Gravel, will be mandatory for all and serve as a tiebreaker. Athletes in the series are also required to attend the awards ceremony. This includes both event podiums and the overall 2025 Life Time Grand Prix awards ceremony.

Athletes must also attend a minimum of two fan engagement activations throughout the series. Fan engagement activations are pre or post-race events, such as a spin out ride or autograph session, that enable an interaction between fan and athlete. It’s one way to ensure that there is more of a collective community experience between elite and age group athletes.

Personally, I think this is not only smart for Life Time but also brilliant for the industry and professional athletes. It is tough to get to events these days. This also allows them some breathing room in the middle of the season. While pro athletes are only losing one event from the series, they are losing two events they have to travel to from an activation and race perspective.

The post Life Time Pulls Back and Extends in 2025 for Grand Prix first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

The more I research the history of this industry, the more I realize how Dan Empfield has influcened the bike industry as we know it today. Let’s talk about something other than stack & reach, or X&Y, or the fact that he created the first Triathlon-specific bike. I want to speak for a second about how he has always influenced front-end design; if you go back in history, you start to notice that every time a bike manufacturer wanted to go with an integrated headset, he told that individual and or company to go pound sand. He would always give many reasons for the why, but in the end, it would be the simplest reason: because it made it too difficult for the user to adjust the bike position. You would sell someone a bike and they would go get fit and well, instead of changing out a stem or adding some tilt, boom you had to take out the old metal saw and find the super glue.

We can go back and look at the companies that have taken heed of Dan’s advice and those who haven’t. Specialized, Trek, and even Cervelo all had a lot of issues with the lack of adjustability in their proprietary set-ups. All of which were justified by the wind tunnel, tests, and a “sexy-looking” bike. When disc braked bikes started to come out, Trek sort of got it right, Cervelo was 2nd, and the Specialized Shiv missed the mark altogether. What the bike manufacturers forgot about was the need for the end-user to be comfortable (comfort = fast) for the long haul of 70.3 and 140.6 distances, which is precisely what they were making those bikes for. The fight over integrated water bladders, and the design on front-end to ensure the bike could be as fast as possible in the wind tunnel, missed the mark. Marketing consumed their time and engineering efforts, skimming over comfort and adjustability.

If you go to this year’s bike count at the IRONMAN World Championships, you can see the bicycle companies that have taken heed of Dan’s suggestions and created bikes that may not be so fast in the tunnel, but offer users the experience that they were looking for when it came to adjustability and comfort.

Back to my original question and title of this article: who really is leading the charge in the aerodynamics and comfort of the front end of the bicycle? Is it the bicycle companies that are making the fastest bikes, or is it the third-party specialists that look at how the big companies are screwing the front ends up and filling those gaps? If you look at the bike count, you see the same bicycle company leading the charge over the last 20 years. Cervelo has lost the bike count only once. But that gap continues to become smaller. If you look at other companies, they have come and gone based on marketing spend, product adaptation, and bike designs that need to be revised for the end-user. What has been consistent across the board is that the front end is always massively won by third-party aero bar manufacturers, and not the stock bicycle manufacturers. These either come from good relationships with OEM partners or simply the fact that the bicycle brands screwed up the front end so badly that the end customer needed to find a better solution to become comfortable for that rider to become faster.

Just look at the current Specialized Shiv, for example. All of that time and energy in the wind tunnel testing that bike working around water hydration and internal bladder patents that, on paper, make it faster than the last one. And they made adjustments based on the feedback they got from the original. Yet the bike had zero to little tilt adjustability. In the end, Specialized got so irritated with the lack of sales from that bike that they ended up abandoning long course triathlon altogether, focusing on shorter-distance events. Not a single sponsored rider is using that bike anymore. If you go online and look at most of the Shivs being sold, they have different third-party aero bar setups. Why is this? Why didn’t Specialized work closely with an OEM spec partner that could help them with the design of that front end? Were they afraid that information about the bike was going to get leaked during development? Were they were trying to increase profitability by manufacturing the front end themselves?

I don’t know the answers to this, but what I do know is that every single time I look at that bike, I get sad. It is a speedy bike, but they just completely missed the boat on the front end which in my opinion, affected sales. By extension, it reduced Specialized’s commitment to long course triathlon (and all of triathlon as a whole).

Now, if you look at other companies that did listen to Dan’s advice and have made tremendous strides with growth, not only in triathlon, but as a brand in general:

KONA bike count over the last 10 years

Quintana Roo is an example that has always worked closely with Dan, not because they have always seen eye to eye, but because they knew Dan would give them the feedback that he gained from the community as a whole, and they would take that feedback and integrate that into the design of their bikes. QR’s history has almost always been to use 3rd party integrated aero bar set ups for any of their TT bikes; they would invariably seek advice and partnerships from third-party experts to help them. This could be because these small companies like QR that I am talking about did not have the budget or desire to work on the front end themselves, but regardless of the reason they didn’t, it seems to have worked out for them in the long run. 

This year in Nice, we learned the same thing at the bike count: overall, third-party aero bars always win over manufactured stock aero bars that come on bikes.

When it comes to the masses, the data points to the fact that either the bike brands need to come up with better approaches to their front-end designs, or they need to work more closely with these 3rd parties that are winning the aero bar race.

Looking at the 2024 Nice Count, only 35.3% of all bikes came with brand-manufactured front ends. 64.7% was with 3rd party OEM Partners or customers switching out for better solutions. Profile Design owned more than 1/2 of that 3rd Party result.

Even the pros are taking the bull by the horns and switching up the front ends.

2024 IMWC Nice, Pro Female Bikes

Is Profile Design the best? At the bottom (age group masses), it appears so, but if you look at the top (the pros), they even need to catch up if they want to continue being at the top. With all these other players in the mix, it’s becoming apparent when you are looking at purchasing your next bike, brand and frame are just one part of the thought process, followed by what bar you will put on.

Now, let’s keep one super important thing in mind: we haven’t completed the 2024 bike count yet; we are only half done. Kona is still to come, when we get all the men’s data, and then we can really start to hone in on all of the trends, including bars. I believe there’s even going to be a bigger gap between vendors. My guess is we will see a greater increase in third-party and 3D-printed bars.

This whole topic makes me think:

#1 There’s a lack of understanding that some of the big bike companies have when it comes to the front-end fit of endurance athletes.

#2 There’s an importance of specialists in the marketplace.

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