Yes that baffles me too; you can’t refill the Elite Crono on the fly and the mount is specific to that bottle. Would he, as a pro, have replacement filled Crono bottles at aid stations? He’d need several.

That is very interesting that he's going with tubular. But considering his bottles and overall focus on being as aero as possible, it would make sense that he wants to run Vittoria Corsa Speeds; they're incredibly light and fast, but I wouldn't say they're very good at puncture protection.

How tall is he? He's running 167.5 cranks.

Pretty flat rear gearing; assuming he wants to stay in the proper cadence as long as possible.

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Confused Fitness Addict -- Biker first, Nutrition second, everything else third.

I would guess that he takes the behind the saddle mount and bottle off before the race.

Also, the tires don't appear to be "Victoria" or "23mm".

Looks like he retrofitted a Specialized rear mount onto his JOF55 saddle. I would love to figure out how to do this as the Spesh mount is my favorite one, out the bottles in a great position

So much different than Tim Reed's Setup of having four bottles. Not sure I like the move to no bento...if anything that makes it less attractive for me. It's definitely interesting.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I mean, tubulars aren't any more aero than clinchers if you have the correct size for your rims. And you can also run the speeds clincher or even tubeless so if he wanted to just run the fastest tires there was no reason to run tubular.

Kennett is also running tubular on his Vision wheels as shown by the slowtwitch gallery, though it appears he always runs them.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
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If you look at the photos in the link the tire label is shown- Vittoria Speed Corsa Graphene 2.0, 25mm

I wasn't implying that tubular was more aero, though it did sound that way. I was implying that he wanted every advantage, and running a higher pressure (that tubular allows) plus the lightest and fastest tire available (that the Corsa Speed provides) satisfies his needs for every advantage possible at the sacrifice of quickly changing a tire.

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Confused Fitness Addict -- Biker first, Nutrition second, everything else third.

Wouldn't it be even weirder to run that setup as a training setup than to run it in a race? Surely he has to have at least one more bottle somewhere, though I would guess he'll run something BTA.

My only thought is that maybe he runs some kind of super concentrated calorie mix in both of those bottles and just chucks the downtube one when he finishes it and replaces it with the BTS. If he only needs those two for calories and just grabs aid station bottles to replace his BTA it seems like a viable move.

And yeah, little bit of editing misses there but I imagine all these sites are trying to pump out a ton of content right now!

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
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To be honest the thing I'm most curious about is how he was able to mount the elite chrono bottle in the downtube so low, usually on SpeedConcept it seats much higher. Custom frame?I don't see any kind of adapter there.

If he's doing liquid calories and needs 2 bottles to hold his calorie needs, this would make sense to me. No need to try to refill on the fly or deal with special needs. Just toss bottle 1 and replace with bottle 2.

I ran into this issue racing IM. I'd have an XLAB aero bottle on the downtube with 1/2 my calories, but would have my 2nd bottle in special needs. This would avoid the SN stop.

The caption for the picture says "Victoria" and "23mm".

Interesting to see he chose Quarq's powermeter over Garmin Vector 3 pedals (while Garmin is his sponsor I believe). Curious to learn why since this crankset is also available without the Quarq thing

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The lids (valves) on those chrono bottles let liquid drip out easily. Hopefully he's tested that rear one, because if it's a full bottle, he'd loose a fair bit going over bumps without some sort of workaround solution.

I've had one of those bottles bounce out my frame in an IM and loose a large portion of my race nutrition mounted traditionally. I am personally surprised that the mount would hold the bottle that way. It is designed for the bottle sitting up and the bottle drops into the base with the assistance of the weight of the bottle. The top clips around the bottle holding it to the cage but it isn't overly secure. I certainly wouldn't be risking my nutrition with the cage oriented like that.

The elite bottle out back is very interesting. I say that because i was setting up a more upright orientation for the bottle on my bike. Even vertically, it performed very well in my eye wind tunnel. Even then, without a forward lean, i figured it would make for a great bottle ejector. But i had planned to try.

But the upside down elite is pretty much a guarantee bottle eject. Unless it is filled with banana peals, and mario kart is the goal. Serious though, every bump will eject some liquid. Oil might slow others down on technical corses.

I am also about to place an elite bottle bta with a more narrow arm position. I figure my mantis style position will help keep water in.

Those bottles are 500ml, 2 at the beginning and 2 on the special needs, only 2l for 4 hours on the bike...

He also could be grabbing drinks at the aid station. Take a few big swigs and toss the bottles. Over the 112 miles those swigs combined with the SN bottles will add up

You can kind of see small caps where the original holes/bottle mounts are. Guessing they just drilled new holes for him? Last year he had a mount to get it lower.

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Matt

You are right. I can see two plugs above the bottle cage, so definitely Trek made extra holes for him.
I'm sure Trek engineers know what they were doing, so I think this is safe to do on SC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKIADqWFy70

My guess is that this isn't the final set up. He has used a bento in all of his WC races.

My guess is he has the Vector pedals just for the sponsorship but actually uses the quarq. You can see there's no battery in the vector and the battery thread is all messed up. terrible design of the vectors: the battery case is metal and it screws into the plastic pedal, so very easy to destroy the thread

That’s a sexy bike. Love the chrome logos! I don’t need to want a new bike, but here I am.

No, it's amateur hour. They sent a hack photo journalist that has no idea about what they are talking about. He completely overlooked that obvious Quarq being used for power and didn't realize those bunked up Vectors wont pair to jack squat on a good day much less without batteries or end caps. And I'm jealous that I'm not there this year, so yeah.