They were counting extensions, they stopped me to ask specifically on a couple of things on my trinity.

Same could be said of Roka. Maybe even worse since they are an eyewear company sponsoring the swim.

On their website landing page there’s zero mention of swim gear. They state: “Performance sunglasses that combine form and function without compromise”

Roka sells a decent share of wetsuits, swim skins, goggles, tri suits, and sim shorts though, right? So sponsoring the swim makes sense even if they did start as an eyewear company.

Ventum just sells bikes. And not many of them.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

Yes they sell a small number of swim related items. That count however pales compared to eyewear.

They started as a wetsuit company and pivoted into an eyewear company after realizing that the number of people that need eyewear far outweigh those that need a $1k wetsuit.

So yes, like Ventum, they sell tri related gear, just not very many of them.

 

As Jay mentions in post #19 of this thread it's was scrabbled together. I did the "Kona Bike Count" with Dan Empfiled for a couple of years in Kona when Dan had gotten permission for industry professionals to enter the transition area and walk the racks the night before the race. I'm a bike nut so it was a joy for me to be included - this was all for publication here in Slowtwitch at the time. In those days (mid to late '90s) we even counted who was riding a steep seat angle vs a shallow seat angle as there will still a few hold-outs back then. I did it in later years for other publications and it changed drastickly and got brutal - a dozen or so of us vying for shade under that big banyon tree just outside King Kam hotel and just grabbing glipses of bikes as they rolled by for check in. It shouldn't be done this way - there's a relationship between the product manufacturers and the Ironman brand that could and should be nurtured and there are more precise and definative ways for companies to promote the use of their equipment at the World Championships of this distance.

One year I was seated beside a couple of guys who were counting groupsets - one from SRAM and one from Shimano. At times there would be clusters of athletes rolling by and you couldn't catch them all, and then there would be short gaps of down time with no one or just single athlete would stroll by. During a lull I noticed a bike that had a SRAM front derailluer and a Shiman rear d. I looked over a saw both guys account for that bike on each of their seperate lists. You asked about aerobars and while I'm sure there was never a 51 Speedshop right extension and a Profile-Desing left extension on the sam bike - you can still see how loose the whole process is and where errors might occur: like a Vision basebar, Profile extensions, and Zipp arm cups - wouldn't be out of the question.

One year I counted pedals as they flowed by and it can be tricky descerning between an SQlab, Xpedo, and Ultegra.

I will never forget a moment, way back in the Slowtwitch days, we were all combing through the racks counting our basic categories when Preston Sandusky (he was with Kestrel at the time) yelled out "Stop the presses!". We all noted where we were so we could return to where we left off and walked over to see what had struck Preston so gravely. He stood agape before a bike that would be ridden the next day in the Ironman World Championship.... I was a Sling Shot (famous for having not a downtube but a cable that ran from the headtube down to the bottom bracket. Maybe "cable" is too storng a term...wire?). It would have been enough to see a Sling Shot, but this bike..this rider.... had a bracket welded on the toptube just behind the headtube and mounted into that bracket was a Softride carbon beam. We were all speachless for a bit and Preston, who had had more time to process it, said - it's a... a...a..... Soft Shot? I still find myself giggling at his reaction decades on.

Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan