Here’s a drilldown on the tires the pros were riding in Kona. Let’s talk about the style of tire first. Is tubeless still the thing? The short answer is yes.

When T.O. goes tubeless you know the pro field has capitulated. To be sure I haven’t spoken to Tim, but I’m pretty darned sure it was a Continental GP 5000 TT graphic – variously called a hot patch, hot stamp, heat stamp – I saw on the side of his tire. This is a tubeless tire – there is no tubed version – and these are (according to my notes) what he had mounted on his Bontrager 75 wheels and I can’t imagine him riding those tubed (though riding that tubeless tire tubed is, from what I hear, exactly what Magnus Ditlev did). Tim was one of the few tubular (sew-up) tire riders last time in Kona.

There were only 3 riders in the men’s field who I know for sure were not riding tubeless: Joe Skipper, Michi Weiss and Ditlev. Certainly there were others because I can’t see what’s inside a tire. But the list in the men’s pro field not riding tubeless is pretty short. Skipper was the most old school, with a 23mm tire in front (the only 23mm I saw in the race), and a 25mm in the rear. Skipper rode Michelin Power TT tires with latex tubes. He maintains they tested fastest for him, and he has had bad luck with flats on tubeless. Okay. As for Weiss, he along with Skipper rode latex tubes and Ditlev as well I must assume.

I know for a fact that 30 of the male pros, out of the 50 in the race, were on tubeless tires, such as Continentals GP 5000 S TR, which is shown in the pic above on the bike ridden by Daniela Ryf. As to all the other riders – minus the 3 above – I could not tell because the tires were some version of Continental GP 5000 that could have been tubeless or tubed. But I’m confident the large majority were riding tubeless and when I talk to the tech tire folks who were in Kona servicing their pro athletes they agree with me that the percentage of pros riding tubeless was probably in the 80 percent range.

Continental was the tire used by 22 of the 50 male pros; and 10 male pros were on Schwalbe. A pair of riders in the men’s field were on Hutchinson (more below on this brand), and 3 men were on Vittorias. There were a couple of Vittoria riders in the women’s race as well. All the Vittorias were the hyper fast and hyper not durable Corsa Speeds except one woman rode the very practical (for this race) Corsa N.EXT. Pirelli had a set of tires on one bike and watch out for this brand in a couple of years.

There is a new Schwalbe with a gray tread and sidewall and a red heat stamp and I think it was a prototype. I could not see a label, as hard as I looked, with a model name. But lo! When perusing the images taken by a camera I finally did see a tone-on-tone graphic showing the model and you can see it above, on Daniela Bleymehl’s tire. Sebastian Kienle is the smartest gearhead I know among the pros and he was riding a set of these. So were Patrick Lange, Florian Angert, Maurice Clavel, Braden Currie and Daniel Bakkegard.

Kienle and Angert were riding this tire in its 28mm width, and perhaps others in this width.

Where Schwalbe absolutely ruled was in the women’s race. Five of the top 6 were riding these prototype Schwalbe Pro One TT tires or the in-line gumwall versions (gumwall pictured above). That’s pretty remarkable because there were only 9 total women on Schwalbes in that race. More than half the field of 44 women starters were riding Continental. If tire use in the women's event was scored like a cross country race Schwalbe would’ve won by a mile.

I don’t know how many non-Schwalbe riders, men or women, were on a 28mm tire. HED report placing none of its 12 athletes (5 men, 7 women) on anything but 25mm tires.

It seemed like everybody who could get their hands on the Continental GP 5000 TT did so. This is a tubeless tire that debuted at this year’s Tour de France. Half the women’s field who were riding Conti tires were riding the TT and in the men’s field Conti TT riders included Sanders, Chartier, Appleton, Von Berg, Svensson, O’Donnell, Chevrot, Hanson, Wurf, and the Norwegian duo of Iden and Blu.

It would be interesting to know what Hutchinson is up to. Max Neumann was aboard a set of tires with a heat stamp saying Hutchinson Racing Lab (pictured below), as was Chris Leiferman.

This makes sense as Hutchinson sponsors the BMC team. What I could not find was a heat stamp on the tires of women’s race winner (and BMC team member) Chelsea Sodaro. I’ve asked her what tires she was riding and I don’t yet have an answer back. On the one hand, when there’s no brand that’s a sign that it could be a tire other than one made by your tire sponsor. On the other hand, below is a pic I took of her bike in the transition area. That tire looks like it could be a Hutchinson.

The best tire set ups in the race? Obviously whatever Sodaro and Laidlow were riding were quite good! Schwalbe had 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th in the women’s race, but Continental took the top-3 spots in the men’s race.

My favorite set up in the men’s race was Kienle – in his final race – who always wins on equipment and if he gets beat it’s for some other reason. He was riding Zipp 858 NSW and Schwalbe’s new proto in a 28mm. Why is that my best of show? Because the wheel was optimized for 28mm, tests fastest on 28mm, and Kienle decides based on facts not tradition.

In the women’s race it’s someone who finished in the middle of the pro field, Elisabetta Curridori, who had one of the most interesting set-ups in the race, male or female. Hers is a remarkable bike that I'll write about more in future articles, but limiting our best of show to things that roll...

Elisabetta rode a HED Vanquish 6 in the front and the Jet 180 in the back, with Vittoria Corsa Speed tires and Vittoria foam inserts. This gets the award because the inserts are a royal PITA to mount and dismount. You probably have to cut the tires off to get them off. But Elisabetta was the one person in the race who had the fastest known tire (the new Conti TT or Schwalbe Pro One TT prototype might be faster but we don’t know yet), along with the one known ride-it-in system if your sealant doesn't solve your puncture. If you’re going to travel from Italy to Hawaii and pay for 2 weeks of that VRBO, you might as well go all-in. Congrats to Elisabetta and her team for thinking this through.

PHOTOS: These are cropped shots from the large format images taken by Aaron Palaian.