ShareThisWhen the riders of the Tour de France compete in time trials that pit each athlete against the clock, the individual efforts will be aided by specially designed bicycles with superlight carbon wheels shaped like wings turned on edge.
Those wheels were perfected, in part, by a pony-tailed man from Minnesota who years ago figured he could make bike wheels in his garage out of carbon fiber.
Steve Hed succeeded with those wheels after many tries, and with the help of his business-minded wife, Anne, built Hed Cycling.
Three of the top six riders in the Tour de France race use wheels designed by Hed, including race favorite Alberto Contador and American cycling king Lance Armstrong.
The Hed wheels selected by riders at the Tour de France are so finely tuned that wheel selection usually occurs the morning of the race and depends somewhat on wind conditions. Armstrong and his Astana teammates will choose from among three wheels: a Hed three-spoke wheel or one of two "Aeolus" wheels that Hed makes in partnership with Bontrager.
Armstrong's return this year wasn't expected, Steve Hed said, but wasn't dramatic, either.
"He just said, 'OK, we're going back racing again,' and everyone who was involved with him before just kind of stepped up and said, 'OK, let's go.'"
Hed soon found himself back in Austin, Texas, Armstrong's hometown. They made two trips last fall to the nation's pre-eminent wind tunnel for bicyclists at the San Diego Air & Space Technology Center, a tunnel Hed helped redesign several years ago to more accurately measure a bicyclists' aerodynamics. Today it's available to any cyclist who wants to conduct a wind test -- at $975 a pop.
How a company in snow-prone Minnesota became an adviser to top cyclists began with waterskiing. Steve Hed spent summers during college shaping waterskis out of carbon fiber. He took that knowledge to building wheels, creating one of the first carbon disc wheels for bicycles in the mid-1980s.
Anne, a triathete who used Steve's early wheels, agreed to sponsor Armstrong when he was a teenager, forging a connection to the future seven-time Tour de France champion.
"Besides the exposure, your product really does become better when it's being ridden by the pros.," she said.
The company has factories in Spain and Mason City, Iowa, but all the wheels pass through Hed's Shoreview, Minn., office, where a trio of wheel builders on a recent morning were busily lacing wheels and measuring them for accuracy.
"It's a lot better than any machine can do," said Anne Hed.
Elsewhere in the office, racers who still compete -- and win -- worked as the receptionist, sales staff and shipping clerks. The Heds say they get some of their best ideas to improve their products from staff members who take the gear out on weekends for test rides.
Hed's early designs, including a trademark three-spoke wheel, changed the bike wheel industry. A newer Hed wheel -- the Stinger 9 -- in certain conditions pushes the rider along with minute force, the measurements of drag dropping into negative numbers in wind-tunnel tests.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit Minneapolis Star Tribune
