Lance's Bike Wheels and Componenets?

Triathlon Forum
1

I know in the past it was no secret that riders used different bikes and equipment and painted the bikes with the team name, etc. Lance has used Litespeeds in the past and now it’s great it looks like exclusively Trek which is an awesome bike. My question is what wheels does lance and/or Discovery use during the stages. I had read in the past that he had a problem with the paired Rolfs at one time and used Mavic from then on with Rolf or Bontrager stickers on them. Now it looks official that Hed is teamed up with Trek & Bontrager for the teams TT wheels which is great. Again, I know Lance and some other riders have used the “Lightweight” wheels for uphill TT and climbs. Will Lance actually use Bontrager paired spoke wheels? Also the Postal Team had used Deda bar and stem combos for a long time. Are these real Bontrager/Trek bars and stems too? Lance always seems to be at the cutting edge. Are these wheels they will use Bontrager, Mavic, Lightweight or Hed?

Livestrong & 7.

2

Well today he had a Hed 3 up front and some kind of a disc. I would guess Bontrager/Zipp. Probably a bad guess, but a guess. If Zipp didn’t make it, I would bet it was made in the big ole factory in the Pacific that makes everything carbon. Sort of a bump until someone with insider info chimes in.

3

Lance uses a Zipp disc rebadged as a Bontrager for TT’s as well as a HED3 up front. For regular road stages he uses actual Bontrager wheels. It used to be the aluminum rimmed Race X Lite Aero and Race X Lite. Now he uses the XXX Lite all carbon tubular wheels for climbing. His flat stage wheel starts life as a XXX Lite, but then goes to HED where they bond on an additional aerodynamic carbon fairing. It still uses the same paired spoke design and the rebadged “Bontrager” DT hubs.

As for bar/stem- they’re actually using the carbon units from Bontrager. I am kind of surprised at that- Lance has been on Deda aluminum stuff for years.

4

Great Info so far. Wow. So that is a Zipp disc in the rear. I know that the Hed tri spoke is in the front which he has used for a while. I thought Lance only used the aluminum bars like Deda. I am suprised he is using the carbon bars. I have a screen saver of Lance (from Discovey Team website) and a couple of team members, and the wheels he is riding look like a 28 or 32 hole wheel with Bontrager stickers on it. It definitely is not the Paired spoke design. I also had read during last years tour from a forum the Postal was using Vittoria tubulars remarked as Hutchinson. I am always a bit curious on his and Discoverys gear selection. Any thoughts?

5

Zipp makes ALL there own stuff in Indiana. A Zipp disc is the product of good ole USA.

6

Lance uses a Zipp disc rebadged as a Bontrager for TT’s as well as a HED3 up front.

It seems like there would be a legality issue here. What would happen if Chevrolet “bought” Michael Schumacher and had him race in a Ferrari badged as a Chevy. Then, they ran commercials saying “Michael chooses to race Corvettes because they are the best car available…blah blah blah” with an ad showing him racing. Does this analogy not hold up to Bontrager selling their product with pictures of Lance riding a rebadged Zipp?

joshatzipp, where you at man?

7

It is undimpled, I believe. At least, it certainly looks undimpled from the pics. Which means it is just a flat disc manufactured in a panel construction. Whether or not it is a Zipp, well, to quote Slick Willy, “I guess that depends on what your definition of the word is is.” Whether it is an actual old Zipp disc, or just an exact replica, who cares. They are not trying to say it is better/faster than the Zipp. One guess is that Zipp sold their old molds to Bontrager. Now that they have newer & better stuff, what do they care?

And for the record, plenty of teams, like Minardi, used to buy Ferrari’s previous year’s car and race it as their own.

8

I also had read during last years tour from a forum the Postal was using Vittoria tubulars remarked as Hutchinson. I am always a bit curious on his and Discoverys gear selection. Any thoughts?

Try to read this article from 2003, when CSC was sponsored by Hutchinson: http://www.velonews.com/tour2003/tech/articles/4588.0.html

*… *

*Happily, when it came to tire choice, the experts were a little more forthcoming. Michael Cook of Shreveport, Louisiana, wrote us to ask whether any teams were riding clinchers, and whether extra steps were being taken to ensure that tubulars were thoroughly glued onto the rims. *

*Michael, in my estimation, about 90 percent of the peloton uses tubular tires in competition. CSC mechanic Craig Geater told me that his team mostly trains on clinchers, but races on tubulars. *

*With 34 Zipp wheels for regular stages, 21 for time trials, seven more specifically for hill climbing, five extras and six sets as back-up back-ups, gluing up these tires can be quite time-consuming. *

*“Bjarne (Riis) won’t allow us to pre-stretch the tires, so after a day of gluing up we get pretty tired wrestling with super-tight tires,” said Geater. *

*Even more interesting was the number of teams using tubular tires bearing brands of companies that don’t make tubular tires. Although it’s never done in public, some tire manufacturers (and saddle makers as well) have portable hot-patch machines that roll their logos onto a competitor’s blacked-out tires. For example, Hutchinson doesn’t make a tubular, but Hutchinson-supported teams all sported “Hutchinson” tires - even though most of the tires I saw were Vittoria Pro CXs. *

…

**

Btw. CSC switched tire sponsor from Hutchinson to Vittoria for this season.

9

It is undimpled, I believe. At least, it certainly looks undimpled from the pics. Which means it is just a flat disc manufactured in a panel construction. Whether or not it is a Zipp, well, to quote Slick Willy, “I guess that depends on what your definition of the word is is.” Whether it is an actual old Zipp disc, or just an exact replica, who cares. They are not trying to say it is better/faster than the Zipp. One guess is that Zipp sold their old molds to Bontrager. Now that they have newer & better stuff, what do they care?

And for the record, plenty of teams, like Minardi, used to buy Ferrari’s previous year’s car and race it as their own.
My entire world is crumbling…

10

It’s not just Lance- ALL Bontrager discs are Zipps! They source them from Zipp and put their name on them to be sold as Bontragers. The same thing with a lot of rims- Easton carbon wheels use Zipp rims. So do American Classic. It’s not a new thing. Bontrager hardly sells any of their discs to the public compared to a company like Zipp or Hed. It isn’t worth their R&D money to make their own.

11

Plus Zipp gets to continue to make money with their undimpled molds, that would otherwise just be laying around doing nothing.

12

That doesn’t look like any H3 I’ve ever seen. That rim looks much much deeper than a standard tri spoke (or is there a H3 “Deep”)

13

Yes, it is indeed deeper. The front is the prototype H3 deep. Been kicking aroud for about 1-2 years. Kind of like a happy medium between the H3 and the Kona Coast Disc of a few years back. May see it in production as HED’s answer to the 808 (along with the new Stinger 9.0).

14

It is undimpled, I believe. At least, it certainly looks undimpled from the pics. Which means it is just a flat disc manufactured in a panel construction. Whether or not it is a Zipp, well, to quote Slick Willy, “I guess that depends on what your definition of the word is is.” Whether it is an actual old Zipp disc, or just an exact replica, who cares. They are not trying to say it is better/faster than the Zipp. One guess is that Zipp sold their old molds to Bontrager. Now that they have newer & better stuff, what do they care?

And for the record, plenty of teams, like Minardi, used to buy Ferrari’s previous year’s car and race it as their own.
This year’s “special” disk that they showed closeups of on OLN had dimples. They did a segment showing the new TTX bike and did a closeup of Frankie Andreu holding the disk Lances specially made disk with the extra artwork on it. You could pretty clearly see the dimples on it. The standard issue Bontrager badged disks available this year to the public were still the non-dimpled version though.

15

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of #7? Even if it is only as rebadged product…

Thanks for the update.

16

The same thing with a lot of rims- Easton carbon wheels use Zipp rims. So do American Classic.

Is it only the rims that ar Zipp or also the hub?

17

Only rims. American Classic uses their own hubs. Easton uses Velomax hubs (all their wheels are rebadged Velomax’s- they bought them out). I think Cane Creek uses Zipp rims with their own hubs as well.

This really isn’t a new thing- it’s common knowledge that Levi’s TT bike isn’t a Specialized. And everyone knows that the TT bike Lance won on in '99 was a Blade, not a Trek. All those carbon Fulcrum wheels are Campy’s. The list goes on.

18

In reply to Sojouner!

Actually what you say is explicitly against the rules of Formula one. All constructors must conceive and build their own chassis. Or to put it more legalistically, they must own the intellectual property rights to the chassis they are racing with. The engines and gearboxes are not such as you often see one manufacturer supplying more than one team.

Minardi wishes they could simply buy an old Ferrari chassis and race it - they might get off the back row with that!!!

19

i can tell you the fulcrum disc is not a campy…=)

frank
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20

Fulcrum IS Campy, it’s a spin-off so Campy can sell Shimano compatible wheels. Cane Creek uses Reynolds rims.

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