(door opens) (dog tags jingle)
- What's up Trainiacs?
(dog nails click on floor)
Just caught word from Talbot Cox, i.e. team Lionel Sanders
that just slightly ahead of time they let me know
that Lionel is changing bikes from Louis Garneau to Canyon.
(dramatic exhale)
(upbeat electronic music)
Okay so, now that it's out there in the public,
I can talk a little bit about
this switch from the Canyon Speed Max.
I have to assume that it is going to be Canyon's
top of the line, approximately $11,000.
This is exciting Grace, (patting dog) right?
Approximately $11,000 tri-bike from the Louis Garneau TR1.
Why is this not surprising?
Well A, Lionel wants to be the absolute best he can be...
Pete, do you want up?
He's looking to shave absolute seconds.
He also looks up to athletes like Jan
as being the best out there, and that's what motivates him.
And knowing that Canyon has won
the last four Konas in a row is fairly telling.
So that's one thing, and then the second thing is that
go and look at Louis Garneau's website.
I dare you to try and find a tri-bike on there.
It just doesn't exist anymore.
In addition to that, Canyon is also making a fairly big push
into North America, and how that works
is there is Canyon head office, which is Europe,
and essentially it's basically a separate company,
Canyon North America.
I'll talk about that in a little while,
why that has repercussions for you.
So Lionel is going to be the very first
North American triathlete riding Canyon.
He's gonna be sticking with head wheels,
and he's going to be sticking with Shimano components.
Ideally he's going to try to get up
to the Dura-Ace components.
But he's got a Stages power meter,
that is a crank based power meter,
and right now there is a worldwide shortage
of Stages Dura-Ace power meters.
So he's going to try to hopefully get towards that.
But he is going to be staying with Louis Garneau
for the kit, the helmet, the shoes, that sort of stuff.
Like all of the gear, the clothing
that's gonna be going on his body.
So, loyal guy, not surprising then.
You know me, I'm a big fan of Ventum.
And besides Ventum, almost all tri-bikes have
kind of got to the point that switching one for the other
doesn't really make a big difference.
They're all very, very similar.
They come in at slightly different price points
and you're trading mere seconds here and there.
But what you might get that's different
from bike company to bike company
is how proprietary one bike company is over another.
Like how easily can you put an aftermarket part on the bike.
In some cases you have to buy a $600 tool set
just to work on some bikes.
In other cases, like Ventum, you can go to Home Depot,
and if you lose a bolt in transit,
you can go to Home Depot and get new bolts.
In the case of the Canyon Speed Max,
works really well with aftermarket parts.
And that gets into probably the bigger news
with Lionel Sanders, is that he has started to work with
Ivan O'Gorman, the bike fitter, former triathlete.
He's been to Kona I think eight times
and he's based out of Boulder.
And Lionel has said that he's working with him
on a coaching or consulting basis, working on bike setup
and all the gear that he's going to be working with.
So, he has worked with Ivan already
and we've seen that on YouTube,
and a little bit on Instagram.
And they went back and forth between
a small and a medium frame.
Decided on the medium frame, and I think
that that's fairly appropriate.
Lionel's kind of borderline, he's five foot 10,
but I'm five foot eight and I can actually
go back and forth between a small and a medium.
So he's a little bit larger, not surprising
that he airs on the side of larger frame
between the small and the medium,
whereas I go on the smaller, 'cause I'm little.
Freakin' me out Grace.
Now this is gonna be really nice for Lionel
because when we looked at his bike in Kona,
it was very slapped together.
He had zip ties on things,
and he had aftermarket parts slapped onto this,
he was trying to zip tie bottles onto the frame,
and nothing was integrated.
If you look at all of the other pro's,
they are riding bikes that are completely slick
and likely you can't even see a cable.
But, that wasn't the case with the Louis Garneau bike.
It is definitely the case with the Canyon Speed Max.
In addition to that, the Canyon Speed Max
is very, very adjustable.
So there's no limitations with the bike
as far as getting Lionel into the best position.
They've also done a little bit of testing,
seeing if they can switch from the stock bars
to aftermarket bars, bottle cages,
mounts for nutrition, all of these things
can mount onto the Canyon Speed Max very easily.
So they have a lot of options for adjustability
and what they choose to put onto the bike.
Okay so I want to show you a little bit
of what I've noticed over the past few months
covering Lionel, and what I noticed
in some of the footage from Lionel on this new bike.
On the right here, we've got Lionel just before Kona.
On the left, we've got Lionel on the new bike.
Something that I've always wondered about with Lionel's
old position is where the elbow pads were under his arms.
And you can look at that and you can see
that it's not really under his elbows,
it's actually more on the forearms.
Still does have a little bit of elbow
sticking out past the elbow cups.
Now why this is notable is when you do that,
you actually create a bit of a fulcrum.
Your arm acts as a lever, which then
places pressure on your shoulders,
which then goes all the way to the upper back.
You're not nearly as fresh as you should be for the run.
Take a look at that new position, and your boy Taren
is not as much of an idiot as some of you might think.
His elbows are smack dab on top of those elbow cups.
Next thing is let's take a look at that back position.
Just draw a line through his spine,
and that is a very big curve.
And Lionel knows that, he says that he's quite hunched.
And looking at his new position,
it's quite a bit more relaxed.
And I think that that is all working
within Lionel's limitations that he naturally has.
Lionel before, because he was doing his own bike fitting,
even to the point of not even writing down
what measurements he would take,
just like slapping things together.
He would just, I imagine, try to get as low as possible
because that's what a lot of people do
to try to get as aerodynamic as possible.
But what a lot of bike fitters that are really qualified
are doing, which Ivan is, are they are actually
looking at the limitations that the athlete has.
And in Lionel's case this limitation of having the hunch
is a bit of a limitation of upper back and hip mobility.
So working within that, probably want to bring him
a little bit up, and it might end up
actually making him more aerodynamic.
Jan Frodeno, when he went to the Canyon bike
and spent some time in the wind tunnel,
he was actually brought up because they found
that it made him more aerodynamic.
Don't yet know if that's what's happening with Lionel here,
but just having a bike company that is willing
to invest dollars, $500 an hour into a wind tunnel
or a track, that is a bike company
that is coming to work with you.
And then another thing that I've noticed
that it might just be where he is in the pedal stroke,
but it looks like they brought his
saddle height up just a little bit.
We'll try to just see what his leg angle is.
And it looks like it's just a little bit more open.
If we draw that line through his body, probably see that,
yeah, the hip angle is just, just a titch.
We're talking maybe two or three degrees,
going from 88 or 89 degrees on the old position
to about 90 or 91 degrees in the new position.
That might just be where he is at in the pedal stroke
but that would kind of happen as you bring yourself up.
Dude, dude (dog licking) that's disgusting.
Gonna have to blur that Mel, I was saying good things.
If we can make Lionel just as aero on a bike
while being more comfortable,
it's gonna allow him to have a better run,
he's gonna have an overall better race.
Obviously Lionel hasn't had a lot of time
to get on this bike, so we don't know
how he's gonna preform, have to imagine that
it's going to be just as good, if not better.
One thing that I know is that he went out
and tried to tackle at KOM, ended up taking it down,
and this KOM was on a long hill,
and that is often where the stiffness
and basically the performance of a bike is really tested.
Because on hills you tend to move a bike side to side,
and if it's not stiff and it's too wiggly,
all the power that you're putting into the bike
is gonna end up going into the flexing of the bike
instead of getting you up that hill.
Of course the question is going to be
Taren, what do you think about the Canyon?
I think it's a perfectly fine bike.
The reason I haven't been gaga about the Canyon bikes,
specifically in North America, is because of
the availability and serviceability of parts.
Practically speaking, there is Canyon head office,
there is Canyon North America.
Canyon North America I believe has to buy parts,
just like any other customer, from Canyon head office.
And because of this there is a bit of an issue
with the logistics of getting aftermarket parts.
If anything ever happens with the bike
serviceability wise and you need a replacement part,
I have heard nightmare stories of people
literally not being able to ride
their Canyon bikes because they can't get parts.
Good bike, going through some growing pains,
and that's natural with a bike company
that goes from almost no bikes in Kona to I think
the third largest bike company in the Kona bike count.
So, this is very interesting stuff.
For the last year everyone has been saying
that Lionel needs a new bike.
Congratulations everyone, you got your wish,
Lionel has a new bike.
Who's excited? These guys?
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Later Trainiacs.