ACADEMIA

In each of his six previous Tour de France victories, Lance Armstrong has always proven the most competitive in the two stages that are the most distinctive and demanding: the climbing and time trial stages. Lance excels when race conditions allow superior talent to shine through. The same holds true for Trek. For the last six years Trek have supplied Lance with an array of made-in-America, OCLV Carbon race bikes -- the ultimate in race-winning technology. Lance TTX Bike For the 2005 Tour de France, the last chapter in Lance's seven year odyssey on the roads of France, Trek has supplied Lance with two wild new bikes: the Madone SSLx climbing bike and the TTX time trial machine. Both have proven to be lighter, stiffer and faster than anything we've build before. As with every other bike Lance has raced, the Trek TTX was developed with the aid of hours of wind tunnel testing. However, the TTX was the first bike built with the aid of computational fluid dynamics. Supercomputing CFD process has not only taken hours out of the development process, but it has also empowered designers and engineers with the most accurate tool yet to produce cutting-edge frames that will cut through the air and shave seconds off the clock. Like all OCLV Carbon frames, the TTX was born and bred at the Trek factory in Waterloo, Wisconsin. A modern bike, handcrafted one at a time in the traditional style that has always defined the art of frame building. It's not just a bike, it's a Trek. Due to its prototype nature, less than a handful of new TTX frames will be available for this year's Tour de France. This bike was designed first and foremost for Lance and due to the allotted development time, only a single size (medium) frame mold was made. Team riders not aboard the TTX will continue to use the proven Trek TTT bike. Starting with the OCLV Carbon that was first developed in 1992, Trek engineers created a purpose-built derivative with OCLV Honey Comb. OCLV HC sandwiches a layer of Nomex honeycomb between two layers of OCLV carbon. This sandwich-like construction provides a large increase in wall rigidity, similar to using a very thick section of carbon. However, the honeycomb layer is essentially hollow. The result is a very rigid structure with low weight. Since rigidity prevents the fibers from moving out of alignment in the laminate, OCLV HC also provides a high level of strength per weight. Few bikes enjoy the winning pedigree of the original Trek TTT. After winning Olympic medals, Tour de France stages and the Ironman, Trek engineers decided it was time to utilize the latest frame science and material technology to try something new. That's when the Trek TTX was born. One difference between the TTX and the TTT is that the former has a 15 mm longer top tube which translates into a longer wheelbase. This geometry change was made to increase the bike's straight line stability. Following his first race on the bike in the Dauphine Libere prologue, Lance called Trek and said simply, "It rolls like a Rolls Royce!"