TSP3: I Bought 4 Sets Of Scott DH Handlebars
Check out the video above from the 14:00 mark. It’s the United States Triathlon Series Miami race that took place on 3rd May 1987. And sets the scene for what we are going to talk about today. A piece of triathlon equipment that changed the sport 35 years ago and is still with us in transition areas today. That is the aero-bar or the tri-bar.
I like to go on ebay and look for vintage-triathlon items. Mainly magazines but also equipment. Stuff like J-Discs, Hed disc wheels, Seat Shifters, Tinley clothing and even bikes. Like a Dave Scott Centurion, a Peugeot Triathlon or one of the Raleighs. Like a Triathlon or a Quadra.
For quite a while I was looking for a pair of Scott DH handlebars. You know the one piece bar that dips down to a kind drop bar before rising back up to allow the classic tri-bar hand position.
The clamp width was 26mm to fit the quill stems of the day and the elbow pads were semi-soft moulded rubber that you had to slide down the whole length of the bar to be positioned next to the stem.
For me, these bars define the aesthetics of the era when I first got involved in triathlon. I saw a pair for sale in late-2020 in the UK. I hesitated at the price and by the time I’d decided to buy them they’d been scooped up by another triathlon uber-nerd.
Images: My 4 set of Scott DH handlebars
But then early in 2021 sets started popping up on the German and US ebay sites at good prices. So I bought 4 sets.
I’m not sure how this happened. But each set I saw looked in better condition than the one I’d just bought. So now I’ve got €400 worth of bent-aluminium triathlon history in my workshop.
The Scott DH wasn’t the first ever aerobar. In 1984 Speedplay pedals founder Richard Byrne made a lay-down handlebar for Race Across America competitor Jim Eliot. Then in 1986 Pete Penseyres won the 5000 km event on another homemade but improved set.
But neither of these bars were patented or manufactured in large quantities. The Scott DH bar was. It was also definitely the first bar to achieve popularity in triathlon.
The concept was developed by Boone Lennon, who was a national team ski coach based in Sun Valley, Idaho. He’d experimented a lot with the aerodynamics of skiing and knew the best way to cut through air.
In 1986 he made a wooden prototype of the DH or downhill handlebar and gave it to contacts he had at Scott USA, also based in Sun Valley. Scott USA eventually became Scott Sports, the bike company now based in Switzerland.
Scott USA was founded by Ed Scott in 1958 to make aluminium ski poles. In the 1970s they branched out into motocross accessories. When they got their hands on Lennon’s prototype they weren’t at all involved in cycling.
An engineer at Scott USA called Charlie French bent the first pair of aluminium DH bars in his workshop and then used them himself to win his age-group at the 1986 Hawaii Ironman. See video below.
A patent was filed in January 1987 and existing handlebar companies Nitto and 3T were chosen to manufacture the bars for Scott. The June 1987 issue of Triathlete Magazine says that the bars retailed for $40 - $60.
Image: Triathlete (USA) June 1987.
The Race Across America crowd challenged the patent but it was considered that their bar was made for comfort on long rides. Boone Lennon’s bar was designed specifically for aerodynamics and speed.
With Charlie French’s interest in triathlon and his proof of concept ride in Kona, the bars would no doubt eventually hit the triathlon market. But the story of how it happened is still an iconic and interesting one.
In the winter 1986 and 1987 ambitious pro-triathlete Brad Kearns had just made a break-through in the sport by winning the first two races in the three race Desert Princess Biathlon series that was organised in Palm Springs, California. The distances were 10km run, 60km bike, 10km run.
With the young triathlon-spin-off activity of Biathlon, or Duathlon as we call it now, still being very much US-centric. The Desert Princess Series was considered the de facto world championships of the sport.
Images: Triathlete (USA) June 1987
Here’s what Triathlete magazine had to say in June 1987 when setting the scene before the third race in the series.
The first two events, held in November and January, set the stage for a dramatic championship. An unknown triathlete from Woodland Hills, California, Brad Kearns, blew away the entire field of seasoned pro triathletes, including Scott Molina, at both races. His second victory over the group was by an impressive five minutes.
After the race, Molina was unruffled by this new young challenger, inquiring if the 21 year old Kearns could swim. (The answer is yes, but that’s another story.) The biathlon had been a novelty for “The Terminator,” a kind of off-season fun race and potential paycheck.
After the second race (he dropped from the first) and a sound beating of more than six minutes, Molina declared with a bit more fire in his voice, “If this guy wins again, he’ll be pukin’ at the finish line.” No more easy wins for the new kid on the block.”
The first two events, held in November and January, set the stage for a dramatic championship. An unknown triathlete from Woodland Hills, California, Brad Kearns, blew away the entire field of seasoned pro triathletes, including Scott Molina, at both races. His second victory over the group was by an impressive five minutes.
After the race, Molina was unruffled by this new young challenger, inquiring if the 21 year old Kearns could swim. (The answer is yes, but that’s another story. The biathlon had been a novelty for “The Terminator,” a kind of off-season fun race and potential paycheck. After the second race (he dropped from the first) and a sound beating of more than six minutes, Molina declared with a bit more fire in his voice, “If this guy wins again, he’ll be pukin’ at the finish line.”
No more easy wins for the new kid on the block.
I got in touch with Brad to talk about Desert Princess. And he was more than happy to chat about the old days. Here he is discussing the significance of those first two race wins and the reaction of Bob Babbitt, the publisher of Competitor Magazine.
So if you’re aware this was a three race series. And at the first two races I had the two best races of my life. I destroyed the field and it was a complete shock to me and everyone else. With Bob Babbitt calling it the greatest upset in the history of multi-sport. Which I might think is valid.
It was Scott Molina, the number one triathlete and winner of the triathlete of the year award and Kenny Souza, who had never lost a duathlon ever.
Those two guys were finally pitted for a showdown and I toasted them twice in a row. In the second race my victory margin was over five minutes.
So I was way out there. And everyone was trying to figure out how’s this guy going to get taken down in February?
But in the final race in the Desert Princess Duathlon Series on 28th February 1987 Brad was about to make history as the first professional triathlete to use a pair of aero-bars in a multi-sport event.
Here’s how he found out about them and then how he got hold of a pair of Scott DHs. And also how much experience he’d had on the bars before racing with them. Note also another Race Across America connection.
I trained with Johnny G, who was the legendary creator of spinning, fitness celebrity and RAAM finisher. So he was the one who introduced me to these bars. And he bugged me for probably a month straight.
Everytime we went out training he said, “You’ve got to get a pair of these. It’s the greatest invention in the last 100 years of cycling.” He was prone to hyperbole and I was like, “Yeah, yeah whatever.”
So finally I was given the number of Boone Lennon and I called him up and he showed me the picture of the comparison of the bicycle rider and the ski racer in the tuck holding the handlebar. It was in the original flyer.
It was such a profound, incredible image where you’re like, holy crap, we’re slicing through the wind. Well skiers do it. And Franz Klammer stood up on the bump and got straight back into the tuck.
So that convinced me and so Boone sent me a pair. By the time I got them on my bike it was Friday and the race was Saturday. So I had a six mile bicycle ride through the neighbourhood as my preparation before I went into the racks and did the World Championships.
I thought the sight of this secret weapon would have turned heads in transition before the race. But according to Brad, apparently not.
Well I had a blanket over my bike before the race. It was just to be funny as I think the only person who knew anything was Andrew MacNaughton, my training partner.
The race was won by easily the best biathlete of the 1980s, Kenny Souza, with Glenn Cook in second and Scott Molina third. Brad finished 4th. Holding his position from T2 after being down in 28th place after the first run. As you probably can’t race with a blanket over your bike, other competitors must have taken notice by now.
I got off the bike in 4th. So I passed a bunch of guys on the bike. So there were a lot of people that got to see me ride away from them in this aero position. What did they think beforehand in the racks? Probably nobody noticed. Didn’t even notice my blanket joke. But afterwards there was plenty of attention. Molina was the first one to come over to my condo with a beer in hand after the race. And my bike was sitting there. And he was like, “What the hell are these?” And I explained just as Boone Lennon had explained to me with the ski racer and the tuck.
For the full condo story you need to read Brad Kearns’ book, Can You Make A Living Doing That? It’s a fun retelling of the ups and downs of his ten plus years on the professional triathlon circuit.
Just like Brad, Scott Molina was equally generous with his time and knowledge to help me get this podcast up and running. Even though Brad covered his bars with a blanket. Did Scott know the bars were out there? And an aerodynamic revolution was about to take place?
I don't remember if I actually knew if they existed but if I did I would have thought, what a ridiculous thing! We had no appreciation whatsoever about what was going to happen with the aerodynamics of those bars.
But during the race he got to see them close up and post race discussing the results with Kenny Souza the advantage they offered was obvious.
Yeah. He went past me like a rocket. I honestly didn’t appreciate it at the time. Until afterwards when I saw all the bike splits and Kenny and I got to talking and that's when I realised, okay this guy has smashed us to bits with these things. And so you know we were on the phone the next day.
So the aero-bars were out there. But they still hadn’t been used by a professional triathlete in a triathlon and they still hadn’t won anything. But on 11th April 1987 that was about to change.
Images: Triathlete (USA) August 1987
The 5th Crawfishman Triathlon took place in Mandeville, Louisiana six weeks after the third Desert Princess race. In August 1987 Triathlete magazine published a report on the Crawfishman race.
Mike Pigg, last year’s co-defending champion, was the pre-race favourite, but Andrew MacNaughton, a native of Montreal, Canada, who now resides in Canoga Park, California, “topped the charts” to surprise Pigg by beating him in his strongest event - the bike. While Pigg was out of the water a minute ahead of him, MacNaughton used the super-strange, super-aerodynamic new Scott DH handlebars to great advantage, speeding to a 1:43:47 bike split - a full five minutes faster than Pigg’s 1:48:52.
Coming out of relative obscurity to race in the Crawfishman, MacNaughton passed Pigg for good at the 22 mile mark of the 45 mile bike. With Pigg still close on his tail at the second turnaround on the T-shaped bike course, MacNaughton blasted through a headwind to arrive at the bike/run transition with a four minute lead. Glenn Cook, one of England’s top triathletes, who had led for a part of the bike, broke a spoke in his front wheel and dropped out before the run.
MacNaughton ran a 1:14:49 half marathon, and Pigg’s one minute faster run wasn’t enough to close the cycling gap. “I was surprised Pigg didn’t run me down,” said MacNaughton. So was Pigg. After the race, he began to wonder if he’d been slipping. “Maybe I’ve lost some of my hunger,” he reflected. Later, he decided that the radical new aerodynamic handlebars used by MacNaughton had a lot to do with his loss.
Within a week he had a pair of his own.
Here’s what Brad had to say about his training partner, Andrew MacNaughton, and the importance of that bike-dominant win at Crawfishman.
Andrew and I were training partners from the very beginning. And he was so inspired by my victories because he considered himself to be as good or a better athlete than I was. And here I was getting all this attention. And he was just some guy who got 11th or 9th in the Desert Princess Series.
He was coming along, but boy, when he came out there in April he was in incredible shape and he had a set of bars. None other than Mike pigg got smoked from the turnaround back into the wind. Andrew put several minutes on Pigg on the bike.
So after the race Pigg, crossed the line, approached Andrew and said, “Where did you get those bars?” Before he said congratulations on your great victory!
Especially knock off the guy who is the biking sensation of the sport. Because we’re coming off 1986 where I think Pigg literally blew up the sport. Previous to that it was a bunch of skinny guys who were great runners. They could also swim and bike. And they would get off the bike and see who could drop the fastest 10km.
And now here was this guy who was riding so fast he was jogging in. Running an unimpressive 35:06 10 km. But it didn’t matter because he had a 4 minute lead off the bike. So everybody had to recalibrate from top to bottom to realise this thing is a time trial and you better get some quads on you and be able to put out some watts. But it wasn’t like that before.
At the St. Anthony’s Triathlon in Tampa Bay on 26th April 1987 Mike Pigg had his pair of Scott DH. He won the race with The Terminator himself, Scott Molina, also racing on the bars for the first time, finishing in second. Scott explained to me that his bars came via his wheel sponsor, Steve Hed, who always seemed to be up to date with anything involving aerodynamics.
On the same day as Tampa Bay, Andrew MacNaughton was at it again, winning Race 1 in the LA Triathlon Series. With Brad finishing in 6th.
Images: Triathlete (USA) August 1987
The week after Tampa Bay and Los Angeles the circuit headed to Miami, for the opening race of the 5th edition of the United States Triathlon Series or USTS. Mike Pigg was the defending series champion and Scott Molina had won the final USTS race of the 1986 season at Hilton Head.
The Miami video is at the top of this page. And I’m guessing here. But this is probably the first time that aerobars were seen on TV. As well as seeing Mike Pigg effortlessly cut through the field and Scott Molina run strong to finish second, you can also see that plenty of pro-athletes, including Kirsten Hanssen and Harold Robinson, are not on aerobars yet.
Some were riding low-profile bikes that wouldn’t easily adapt to the hands forward position and some simply couldn’t get hold of a set. Brad again.
You know, I'd bring my bike to the race and I'd be taking it to the parking lot and people would come up to me with cash offers right there on the spot. “I’ll give you $500 for those bars, I’ll give you $250 for those bars.” And I declined every time as I didn’t think that was right with Scott sponsoring me and all that. I don’t think he could keep up at all with the production when they first came out. Everybody wanted a pair.
Towards the end of my Zoom call with Brad, I held one of my sets of Scott DH up to the camera. A silver Nitto production model from 1987 or 1988. Brad instantly noticed the difference between mine and what he was on in 1987. Also explaining the low availability of the early bars.
Yeah. They were hand made. The ones you showed me from 87, I think those must be production. Because mine were clearly asymmetrical from the right side to the left side. So that's a beautiful pair right there. But whatever Boone did with the blow-torch, that's what I had. Yeah. A special pair.
Due to the initial scarcity of the bars and the clear time advantage offered to those that had them, the governing body of the sport in the USA, Tri-Fed, was definitely worried about an uneven playing field being created. In September 1987, Triathlete published the article No More High-Tech Bikes that rumoured Tri-Fed were considering rules that could see technologies with limited availability, like Scott DH bars, being banned. As well as a maximum bike price allowed in triathlons.
Although I’m pretty sure these rule changes never happened.
Images: Triathlete (USA) September 1987.
In 1988 Profile for Speed, now called Profile Design, released their first one-piece aerobar. It was called the Aero 1 and offered a similar hand position but with a shallower drop-bar area. Another patent battle saw Profile settle out of court to produce their bars under licence from Scott.
Smaller brands also tried to get involved in the aerobar game but Scott USA was intent on defending their patent and closed down potential rivals.
Syntace and a few others also licensed Scott’s idea in the 1990s. Otherwise we had to wait until 2006 and the patent to expire before more companies could create their versions of aerobars.
For the 1989 season both Scott USA and Profile for Speed had clip-on models. The Scott ones were famously used by Greg Lemond in the 1989 Tour de France. And the Profile Aero 2s were the first aerobars I ever owned, having bought them on a family holiday to Florida in July 1989.
Looking through the triathlon press from 1987, 1988 and 1989 you can see that many triathletes who started out on Scott DHs eventually moved to Profile Aero 1s. In 1987 athletes didn’t have the choice, but in 1988 and 1989 Profile probably had the better sponsorship packages for pros and slicker supply lines to sell to age-groupers.
And although Scott released the Extreme and 100k one-piece bars, and their clip-on models remained popular, by 1990 the DHs had pretty much disappeared from the sharp end of races.
So the bars travelled from Sun Valley in Idaho, took a quick trip over to Kona, then to Palm Springs for the Desert Princess biathlon, down to Louisiana for the Crawfishman and then all over the USTS circuit.
But what about the UK? How did the bars first get there?
Images: Cycling Weekly (UK) 21st January 1988
I got my lead on this part of the story, the first person to use Scott DH bars in the UK, from an article in the 21st January 1988 issue of Cycling Weekly. The piece is titled Go Faster With New Radical Aero Bars.
This season has seen a radical re-appraisal. When Aussie Phil Gable arrived at the Jordan’s race with his bike extended by what seemed to be a good six inches at the front with the Scott DH handlebars, people looked… and laughed. Two hours later, when Phil had cruised past a top-class field even without the benefit of cycling shoes or toe-clips (forgotten), people looked again. The laughter was noticeable by its absence.
I managed to track down Phil Gable in Australia. Like Brad and Scott, Phil was equally generous with his time. We ended up exchanging plenty of emails and spending an hour or more chatting about the backstory to the bars.
By 1987, Phil was an ambitious triathlete already in his 5th year of racing. So at the end of January he headed to Fremantle in Western Australia to take part in the self-titled World Sprint Triathlon Championships. The race was a big deal. With the biggest ever prize purse in the sport. And pretty much all the best triathletes in attendance. I mentioned it in Episode 1 and I’ve got a full podcast about the event planned for the future.
Phil finished 20th in Fremantle, after coming off the bike in 6th and in the main pack. But the performance gave him the idea that he could compete well out of Australia. In some of the biggest races on the international calendar. So sometime in the spring, he quit his physiotherapy job in Adelaide on a Friday and by Monday was on a plane to San Diego.
To live the late-1980s triathlon dream. To do The Tuesday Run and The Wednesday Ride. To race the USTS Series. And to maybe hang out with people who held a similar interest in a new and fledgling sport.
In San Diego, he ended up lodging with local journeyman pro-triathlete and bike shop owner, Mark Montgomery. It was on a training ride with Mark one day, when a pair of cyclists bolted past them.
Phil and Mark chased and caught up to the two cyclists, basically just to find out how they were going so fast and why they looked so slick and stream-lined. The answer was that they were both bent over on Scott DHs. It was Boone Lennon and Andrew MacNaughton
Mark and I were cycling one day on Highway 101. Don’t know why. Might have been coming back from a Tuesday morning ride or something. I have no idea why we were on highway 101. And these two guys literally just barrelled past us and we kind of stared at each other and said, “what was that?”
It was quite funny at the time. So we thought let's catch up to them. Which was lucky at the time because I think they were going slower than normal. Anyway we caught up to them and they were just two really nice guys having a chat. Boone was really quite talkative and Mark is really talkative.
And I guess we exchanged phone numbers or whatever. Had a quick talk about what was happening, what they were. Tried to get our heads together on what we were looking at. And pretty much parted on our own ways.
Mark was owning a bike shop at the time and he was particularly interested in getting the bars in as a sale item.
In only a couple of weeks I was about to head off east to go to Houston USTS and a few other events. So I had the bars forwarded to me at a friend's place in Santa Clara. I picked them up there and put them on. And then caught the plane from Santa Clara to Houston. I’m pretty sure I used them in Houston. I can't actually remember.
Phil raced three times in the USA, including Wildflower and USTS Houston. But deciding that pursuing the USTS was not for him, he headed to Europe with his new handlebars bolted onto his lo-pro Berretto and plans to follow the Aussie tradition of a working holiday in the old country – but maybe with a few Triathlons thrown-in.
He’d met Glenn Cook and Sarah Coope during his travels and Sarah had given him the phone number and address of a friend of hers in France. So his ultimate destination was Paris. To look up Sarah’s friend, Kevin O’Neil, a British pioneer on the French triathlon circuit. And hopefully to negotiate a place on Kevin’s team, Poissy Triathlon.
But before making his way to Paris, Phil stopped in the UK to stay with an old university friend in Manchester. While in the North East, he debuted the bars discreetly at a couple of Manchester Wheelers midweek time-trials and at the Mansfield Triathlon on the 40k bike that followed the pool swim!
But it was after his win ahead of a surprised Mike Harris at the Round 2 of the Le Coq Sportif Grand Prix hosted by the Jordan’s Triathlon in Bedford, that the triathletes took notice. He also won Round 3 at Barry Island.
Jordans was my first exposure to the UK big time. Yeah. The gun went off and then I never saw anybody. Except I met what I gathered was Mike Harris at the end. Who was saying, “What are those things on the front of the bike? And the other thing he was asking was, “how come you guys dont ride with bike shoes.”
That’s right. Phil had forgotten his cycling shoes and did the bike ride in his running shoes. He eventually found them in his van after the race.
Phil’s trip to France also ended up being a successful one. He got that place at Poissy and became the first Australian to race regularly on the French circuit. I think that’s also a story for a future episode.
Image: Tri-Athlete (UK) April 1988
Back in the UK. Sometime in 1987 bicycle component distributors Freewheel supplied their sponsored athletes Mike Harris and Sarah Springman. Then in the March and April 1988 issue of Tri-Athlete UK the bars were officially announced to the UK triathlon public.
You’ve seen them in pictures, you’ve seen them at the events, now you can finally try them for yourself. The Scott DH (downhill) handlebars have arrived on our shores and are set to sell like hot cakes.
Official vendors were named as Bert Harkins Racing in Berkhamsted, RJ Chicken in Dunstable and Caratti Sport in Bath. The retail price was £48.
So. What am I going to do with my bars? At the moment just look at them and think about the good old days. But then to start to build a period correct 1987 or 1988 triathlon bike to use at a few local races.
My brother will also take one set. He’s a big handlebar geek and has several other vintage models in his garage. I’ll record an episode with him soon so he can take us through his tri-bar collection.
Interestingly he has some MB Bars. Another one piece handlebar from the 1980s. The shape retains the full drop bar characteristics before the aluminium rises up and forward about 15 cm apart parallel to the stem.
I recently chatted on Facebook with the bars’ inventor. I really want to record something with him. There’s a great back-story there. Including being beaten to a large manufacturing contract by Scott and the possibility that both the MBs and DHs were being developed separately but at the same time on different sides of the Atlantic.
Glenn Cook also posted on his Instagram account in February 2021 that he had the first pair of Scott DH bars in Europe. In fact, he was racing them even before Phil Gable triggered the Cycling Weekly article by getting aero at The Jordan’s Triathlon on 21st June 1987.
I haven’t been able to contact Glenn for confirmation but I believe he first used them at the Avignon Triathlon on 7th June. Below. Where he finished 2nd to Mark Allen. There’s also a picture of Phil Gable. I couldn’t find one from Jordan’s. So instead it’s a picture taken 5 weeks later at the Canterbury Triathlon.
Images:
Tri-Athlete (FR) Juillet 1987
Tri-Athlete (FR) Septembre 1987
Like Phil Gable’s bars, Glenn’s pair of Scott DHs were sourced in California on a training camp in the spring of 1987. And although Glenn opened his 1987 European season at Les Mureaux near Paris on 8th May and also raced the European Short Course Championships in Marseille 31st May. I’m pretty sure that he didn’t use the DHs at these races. At least, it’s not mentioned in the race reports.
Check out the 14:45 mark in the video below. It’s the USTS Championship race at Hilton Head that took place on 27th September 1987. They're still talking about Scott DH bars!
Thanks again to Brad Kearns, Scott Molina and Phil Gable for your enthusiasm for the project.
Links:
1987 USTS Miami
Story of Innovation - Charley French
Can You Make A Living Doing That by Brad Kearns
1987 USTS Hilton Head
Sources:
Triathlete: Was the first aerobar really not the first?
Slowtwitch: Profile Design A Coherent Strategy For Aerobars
Simon Ward Podcast with Mike Harris
Scott Sports History Page
