.

Of the brands you mention, only Giant hasn't released an updated Trinity. The others are all 3-5 years away from a new bike based on normal life cycle
Though the BMC Speedmachine has been launched but isn't really available yet
Expect life cycles to stretch as tri bikes get relegated further down the list for a lot of brands as we go through a global recession

Most brands haven't nailed normal extensions, rushing to do poorly executing arm fairings wouldn't be a great idea.

It's curious as to why. Maybe the pandemic slowed development or production start up but its interesting for a bike design that is 10 years old now (and hugely popular in the UK) has now allowed itself to be caught so far behind. Even if they rely on the Cadex arm to do the heavy lifting for them, they're still going to need a new TT bike for the worldtour pro's.

True, however I heard that Argon 18 will launch the next gen E119 in 2024. The Canyon Speedmax is dated back to 2021 with a small upgrade in 2022. Next year is feasible maybe :)

Some of the bigger brands might want to buy up 3rd party cockpit makers and integrate into their offering. That has been seen before.
Argon 18 is already working with and shipping the E119 with 51 Speedshop bars.

It would be nice to find any decent bike with a stack of 450mm (pad Y of less than 500) so smaller people can be fit properly.

I mean just raise the Bottom Bracket for fxck's sake.

They improved the 119 by 1 watt after 5 years (16-21)

I wonder what a new model will bring. I would be very surprised they do something in 2024, but hey who knows.

One thing I would like to see is manufacturers put some smarts into their bike, as Argon has envisioned back in 2016. Who knows, maybe that's what they will do.

Do you think spesh will come out with another attempt at a tri bike in the future ? Or just lean on its TT rig?

And I’m suprised we haven’t seen a trinity disc yet

Was it not a bit more than 1 watt ? They mention 10w here. Well, the base frame in the 2021 model is the same as the 2016 model (which I am still on), so not surprised.

Argon 18 has always (think E114 back in the day) been at the forefront of design innovation, but not much new has come to the table lately, not even their aero-roadbike SUM was really up-to-date with competition. I think they got burned hard by the whole Grand Tour team adventure maybe.

.002 in CDA (as per their whitepaper) , between the 2021 Rim and their latest and greatest disc version of the 119.

0.002 at say 40km/h is about 1.6watts.

At 36km/h, ie 5h IM bike split, it's down to 1.18watts

BTW, the founder left 2019ish, so I suspect they are a different company today. Different owner, different managers, different R&D.....

I have mixed feelings on the good and bad of the World Tour experience.



But back on topic, I wonder where tri bikes will go.

The market is not huge.
The big brands have to maintain UCI legal bikes for their WT teams.
A non UCI bike is not really faster or should i say a UCI legal bike can be made as fast.

At the end of the day,

if they put all their effort into optimizing UCI legal bikes,
instrumenting them to tune performance,
gave us innovative aero ways to deal with triathlon specifics,

We would be faster and by a lot

I'm not seeing much in the way of "all" effort, mostly incremental improvement. The last big wave of innovation seemed to be integrated, easily-adjustable mono-post style front end with forearm-cupping. But that wave is a few years old now.

The aero-stick wave that was imminent for a few years never really broke from a swell into a proper surfable wave. Still the domain of aerogeeks, mostly.

Specialized tried with the wide fork thing and big tub of liquid in the back, but that doesn't appear to have taken the world by storm.

I'm still confused by Cannondale. The EF pros have been riding something slick-but-not-earth-shattering for a few years, but I sure can't figure out how one can actually buy that frame.

Couldn't you mount a 2nd bottle between the arms to achieve a similar outcome?

Like this but higher and further back. You could even go wild and get one of those longer bottles that hold 1.5L

Just chug in a big fat milk gallon in there maybe? :)

I would like to see something where I put in the watts I would like to hold and the bike does the rest, kind of like ERG mode on the trainer. That might take some engineering, but that would be a game changer. Im sure its sci-fi for now, but maybe in the future? It would be some sort of different cassette technology and would be integrated to the power meter. Advantages would be huge. It would make the bike leg of longer races more efficient and be able to better predict perfect nutrition strategy and eliminate spikes which are less than ideal in long TT races. Of course at times you would want to turn it off or adjust it. Something maybe you could do with your bike computer. Just dreaming.

You're in luck, that's the current state of affairs!

I think you mean something more like automated shifting to keep you in your preferred sweet spot of force application/cadence regardless of wind, slope, etc?

exactly. it controls the gear shifting for you, and its more of a continuous shift sort of thing like a CVT on a UTV. tall order I know.

 
unless the course was pan flat with no wind that's a recipe for slow splits

OK, then a dual clutch linear gearbox on an F1 car. :)

Yes, I picked up on that. I was just referring to the stillborn aerostick revolution of the past. Fully agree there's room for other tech things.

I think an important area to look for improvement is wherever current builds are limited by materials. Carbon fiber has come a long way from the early days but is still improving (slowly).

A low hanging fruit is tube size, width specifically. With a strong enough material the head tube can be arbitrarily thin, likewise for all other tubes, specifically fork legs and seatstays.

I would expect disc brake covers to become a thing in the future as well. There's a consumer safety issue to overcome (they will overheat if dragged on long downhills), but it could be possible to use the hub/caliper/cover as a heat sink. Not to mention dragging you brakes in a TT is antithetical to TT-ing.

Not flashy, but I would expect to see more improvements (in terms of watts saved) in the wheel/tire area. Tubeless is a big improvement over tubular, latex is a big improvement over butyl, 25 is a big improvement over 19. It was only 15 yrs ago that everyone knew you run the skinniest tires at the highest pressure you can. IMO we've only scratched the surface on this front.

Unfortunately big swings on tri bikes are usually muted by the need to make a UCI-legal bike by any company with big money.

I wouldn't be surprised if manufacturers start dropping weight but not improving much else on the latest aero frames. What's old is new again.

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My Strava | My Instagram | Summerville, SC | 35-39 AG | 4:41 (70.3), 10:05 (140.6) | 3x70.3, 1x140.6 | Cat 2 Cyclist

Canyon work on a six year life cycle, so you can figure out when the next generation will come....

Brands may work with one of the newer cockpit makers to develop next gen. But most of those 3rd party bars are designed as addons and are less suited as an original spec.

is it so far behind though? There are a few options with Giant
- they know their tri volumes as well as Trek and Scott, so don't see an ROI in redoing the TT version
- they haven't been able to design a faster bike so don't see the point in a new release
- pandemic put them under so much pressure they haven't had time for working on a niche product (I know the new Liv and the Cadex were well behind schedule)

Given the way they're retracting on so many fronts and what they've told sponsored athletes, I'd be surprised to see much from them.
I've found their approach odd though, went from the Shiv Tri being a full price spectrum bike, to the Shiv Tri Disc being weird and expensive
Part of the reason they don't see Tri paying off is because they made the development of the Shiv Tri Disc so expensive with proprietary parts.
If they did a nice frame and used available parts they could have a nice option for their stores and fanboys.