That's really not a "very short" bike, small but not terribly small. You'll be able to fit on most major brands without any problems.

Do you have brands you're interested in? Available to you?

There are a few threads here about bike fit. Cervelo, Quintana Roo, Canyon...not sure of any more but those will get you started.

Have you considered 150mm or 155mm cranks?

One of the shortest professional triathletes is Mirinda Carfrae. She is 5' 3" (160 cm). She has won the Kona Ironman championship three times. I expect she could get any bike sponsor she wanted. She rides a Felt. I expect bike fit was a major factor in her choice.

I am at the shorter end of the spectrum - 5' 7" (170 cm). I switched my bike from 170 mm to 155 mm cranks. This was recommended to me to help open my hip angle. The one drawback I've noticed is that I need to shift down sooner when going uphill.

You are correct. Going from 170mm to 155mm would require one gear shift to be the same as before.

Yup! That fits with 160mm cranks, down from 165 on my road bike

Have you considered shorter cranks?

Focus, Jim. This is a thread about bike frames

Look at the argons - as others (on this thread) have mentioned elsewhere, the geometry tends to work well for the range you are seeking.

This is not an outlier position.... 48cm P5 disc, just barely behind the back end of a 51cm P5d. Are you sure you have the pad reach right? Is that to back of pad or center of pad?

Eric

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

A friend of mine who is tiny rides a Kestrel 48 cm. It has an open diamond frame, that is, no seat tube, if I recall correctly. That limits the amount of water bottles she can put on the frame, but if you’re looking for a sprint tri bike, you don’t need to carry that much anyway for your races.

Here’s what it looks like, not sure if it is in production still, but many fine used bikes are out there looking for new owners.

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Sharon McN
@IronCharo
#TeamZoot
Clif Bar Pace Team 2003-2018

you should tell us whether 408mm is measured to the center of the pad, or to the back of the pad.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

That frame does not have a seat tube.

That’s to the centre of the pad.
In hindsight I’m not convinced of the measurement, so I’ve asked the fitter to double check somehow.

The centre of the handlebar was 431mm reach, which kind of makes sense as the elbow pad was behind this.

Correcting my post, thanks.

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Sharon McN
@IronCharo
#TeamZoot
Clif Bar Pace Team 2003-2018

Extra Small "XS" Premier 2.0 Triathlon Bike – PremierBike

You're welcome

Without getting into coordinates you will find that if the athlete is short torso you can get into a good fit on an Aero Road bike. Stack may or may not be too high.

Someone mentioned Miranda Carfrae. Her old Cannondale slice has a very short reach in the smaller size. This is what I am on at 5'6" and very short torso.

Hmm could be wrong but your saddle looks pretty far back, which may go some way to explaining why the pad x seems short.

Does your fit report give effective STA (seat tube angle?).

Cheers, Rich.

Question for you: your x/y from your fit, is that to back of pads or center of pads?

I have a super weird fit, and nobody believes me when I tell them mine. I’m also 5’6”. My last proper fit was 422/532 to back of pads, and after a long time of agonizing over single digit mm’s, I rounded up to 465/535 to center of pads, figuring about 40cm for half the width of an average armrest.

I ended up getting a Felt IA16, size XS. I also switched out the stock stem that came with that frameset for a Felt Dagger stem, which I believe is -17 deg/110mm.

If you want to send me a pm please do. Somebody mentioned Argon 18, which is what my previous Tri bike was, and I could not get low enough without going to a very weird setup. That was an E116 without integrated front end, with a Profile Design Aeria bar that just had too much stack. So without replacing a lot of the front end i had to resort to a Ritchey adjustable stem at -44 deg.

I think depending on what you’re racing, you might do what Dev said and look at road frames. I had a plan to use my 52cm Venge with a Zipp Vuka Bull base bar and undermount Vuka clip-one because of their low 37mm stack, but I never did it.

On this page you will see stack-reach of the Cervelo S-series. Stack is 53 reach is 37 on the 51

https://www.cervelo.com/en/s-series

and on the P-Series size 51, stack is 50.6, reach is 39

https://www.cervelo.com/en/p-series

This is largely unchanged from the old Soloist and the P3. I could make both fit, but I feel I had a better set up on my old Soloist than on my P3. I think I would have been better on the size 48 on the P3 with 48.5 stack and 38 reach. My ancient slice is 49.5 stack and 37 reach, and I think this works well for me. If I go Cervelo on my next bike and get P series, I would likely go with the size 48 that has 1 cm lower stack than my Slice which I have slammed and has 1 cm longer reach (easily solved with pad placement)

4.2cm from tip of saddle to BB line, so quite far forward I think!

Centre of pads :) and I’m 5’8

FWIW when I bought my Argon 18 (at Velosport, in Putney) I debated between that bike and a Felt DA - should have bought the Felt DA, in a 51 there’s not too much else that’s as low as that.

Again, it depends if you think you want a road frame (better for sprints maybe?) or a TRi/TT frame. You could also take a look at the newer model Venge, as you can get short aero extensions from Specialized that are made for that aerobar. Same story with Trek Madone.

Why would a road bike based TT be better for sprints?