Crowie Riding Specialized Shiv for Kona? (Page 2)

It's the new Shiv. Same stripes as the Crowie pic. Notice the built in hydration.

Turns out it was a new Shiv.  Love the new front hydration.

That's got to be it.  The massive BB area and frontal area where the top tube meets the downtube are highly consistent with the picture of Crowie and Lieto. 

Also, where the heck did you find that picture?

This means that by riding the Cervelo in Vegas Crowie has broken his contract with Orbea.  Therefore, he was available and Specialized scooped him up on the rebound. 

Wow.

Yup....knew the hydration was integrated!

Am I the only one that thinks this bike is ugly as sin?

meh...

give me the old one in black!

Saw this on ST, and thought it was way to good to not be shared here as well:

Edit:

Looks to me like the bike is geared towards long course racing. Almost like a Dakar motorcycle. The bike looks like it has a gas tank.

It may be fast and prove to be "the" bike in triathlon, but at first glance, I'm not all that impressed. If I was an IM athlete, I may dig it a bit more. Like Bryan says, looks like its not that functional for an everyday bike.

I'll stick with my Shiv TT till more info becomes available.

I just read the new Tom Clancy novel and it got me thinking about this.

I think this is a very well conceived Specialized marketing project- and if it is, they deserve credit for it. Here is how it worked:

10 September 2011. 07:14 hrs. Local Zone Time, 00:14 hrs. GMT.  Henderson, Nevada, United States.

The box arrived on schedule four days earlier. It had the usual logos, not matching the contents. It wasn't an accident or a case of packing in a hurry. The deception was deliberate. The man packing the box a few days earlier in Morgan Hill, California did so after all employees had left for the day. He drove the box to a UPS store rather than await the normal daily pickup. The return shipping address was not the large corporate headquarters he worked at, it was a house on any street that looked like any other street in California.

The delivery address said Craig Alexander. A signature was required.

Alexander opened the box and smiled. Tape already covered the logos. This was brilliant. All he had to do was show up and race. No press releases, no "leaks". The media engine did these things automatically. This move put the "guerilla" in guerilla marketing in a way that would make Che Guevara proud. Of course, winning would help, but Alexander knew he could do that...

Alexander simply wheeled his way into the transition area and did what he did. A tall bald man with a funny hat and an accent ran alongside in the early morning sunshine snapping pictures. Herbert Krabel, a razor-sharp investigative journalist with the rogue website Slowtwitch. Minutes later Krabel was sliding a memory card into his laptop and making a wireless connection. The people on the forum would eat this up.

10 September 2011. 21:12 hrs. Local Zone Time, 12:12 hrs. GMT.  California Desert outside Edwards Air Force Base: Code Name, "Xantusia" United States.

It only took minutes for the thread to do its work. First a few hundred people had looked, then the usual sarcasm and pink highlighted responses from the forum pundits. But then the tsunami hit full force. Industry mavens e-mailed it to industry mavens. The link to the thread beamed around the world in hours. It was a coup.

In Morgan Hill, California a man in a cubicle looked at the screen and smiled. Phase One: Completed.

In the following day Craig Alexander would receive a different bike, a new one, from the same UPS shipping store. This bike did have decals. It also came in a box that matched the decals. Alexander pulled it out of the box, slid the packing tubes off the frame and unwrapped the foam from the deep, blade shaped downtube.

The bike he used in Las Vegas sat in the corner now, largely ignored. It was a piece of history now. It's job was complete. The new bike, the real bike, went into the work stand and got tuned for its first ride before Kona. The bike was black and had black vinyl appliques over the large white logos on the down tube. His instructions were to remove the black vinyl appliques only the morning of the race after he entered the transition area. The night before the race the bike would sit there, logos covered, photos shot and beamed around the world.

The implication was clear: Crowie was testing bikes. He would, as a top professional, test them all. Then he would pick the best one. That's what they would say on the forums. Of course, there would be the usual arguments, but the take-away would be that the guys who made the first "mystery bike" he rode in Las Vegas would be out-guerillaed. It was a marketing coup.

Underneath the black vinyl on his new bike were the white, italic words: "S-WORKS".

The ruse was ready. The hype complete. The trap sprung. When Crowie wheeled the much speculated "mystery bike" into the transition area every camera in Kona would try to catch it.

It was the singular best guerilla marketing introduction in triathlon history, based on Scott Tinley's elaborate ruse back in the 1980's when he covered his "mystery bike" with a blanket to conceal the Aerosports handlebars and wheels. That was before the internet. Now images of Crowies "mystery bike" would be all over the world seconds after it was unveiled.

It was the kind of advertising you just can't buy.

Thanks! I see someone bumped the thread too.

Long course racing comment seems right.  It would be nice to load up a 5-6 hour bladder full of Infinit and only have to worry about a bottle of water at aid stations.  But like Bryan said, the wind tunnel numbers will be interesting to look at.

The price points are not as high as I thought they would be for the different models either.  http://lavamagazine.com/gear/specialized-sharpens-the-shiv/#axzz1Zf9XbVvK

Looks like it's offical...it's a Shiv

http://triathlon.competitor.com/2011/10/gear-tech/craig-alexander’s-new-specialized-shiv_40896

According to his facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Craig-CROWIE-Alexander/407788987515

he is riding it.

I like the naked carbon fiber on it. 

And smaller wheels!