Ben Deal + Summer Deal sign w/ TriRig to ride Omni
Ben Deal and Summer Deal looking pretty darn slick with their matching TriRig Omni bikes.
Team Deal + TriRig Omni » The happy vibes of Ben and Summer are absolutely infectious, and it's really fun to get that energy on camera. You can ask them to be serious, but you'll just wind up with everyone laughing. That's more than OK with us! At TriRig, we're all about the relaxed vibe. One thing I love about these shots is that you can see how strikingly different Ben's fit coordinates are compared to Summer's, and yet each bike looks just right. Neither one is even close to the limit of its adjustment range, and each rider has lots of room to tweak that fit going forward.
And the beauty of Omni is that tweaking your fit is, in general, a matter of adjusting just one or two bolts. Ben and Summer were thrilled to get set up on the Alpha One which essentially functions as a mobile fit lab, which replicated their positions in no time.
Ben Deal and his wife Summer Deal are two of triathlon's most exciting young faces. The couple is in their mid twenties, with an appetite for adventure and the dedication to chase it. We had the opportunity to meet them earlier in the year, and knew immediately that we wanted to be a part of their journey in the sport. And fortunately, the stars aligned, and we are proud to announce that Ben and Summer are officially TriRig-sponsored athletes.
There's a very nice story here, and some of it comes from Ben himself. Here's what he had to say to us:
We’ve always been picky about our bikes, but we’ve also always been on a budget. As a fairly early adopter of 1x, I’ve never even owned a tri bike with a front derailleur, which means I never miss the small jumps offered by a 2x! Thankfully the Omni was designed with 1x in mind, and was super easy to set up. The details Nick designed into the bike really started to stand out while installing the groupset. Simple things like the exit angle of the rear derailleur cable make the routing the cleanest I’ve ever seen on a mechanical bike.
When it came time for one of us to upgrade to electronic, Summer was more than deserving after having suffered through my terrible wrenching over the years. A big pet peeve of mine with electronic groupsets is when the junction or blip box is exposed to the wind in an otherwise clean setup. Fortunately, Omni offers two options for a completely hidden junction box, the stem or the bento storage. We elected to go with the stem, as the bento will without a doubt be filled with nutrition during races.
It's often these small details that really make an impression. Omni's aero-matched skewers are probably our favorite addition to the bike. In the past, I used a cheap pair of anti-theft skewers to minimize my frontal wind area. The aero gain is marginal to be sure, but the mental aspect of it matters just as much as the wattage saved. And because the skewers on the Omni are essentially a part of the fork, they are a perfect aesthetic match, and really perfect the flow of the bike. And of course we’d be lying if we said aesthetics weren’t an important mental aspect as well. I'm fond of saying that 'If you look good, you feel good. If you feel good, you play good.'
All that being said ... the details don’t matter for anything if the bike doesn’t ride well though. In our second ride outside on the new bikes, we took to our favorite climb in the Albuquerque mountains: a 9 mile ascent followed by an absolute bomber of a descent. In the New Mexico desert winds, this was the first time we ever felt comfortable staying in aero the entire descent. There is no learning curve to riding this bike, it just feels right. And if something doesn’t feel right, it’s just one or two twists of the wrench hidden in the frame to adjust any aspect of the cockpit. The bike just works, and looks good doing it. We can’t wait to put them to the test on the flat and fast 70.3 Indian Wells course in just a few weeks.
-Ben Deal
But there's lots more to this story in the words and images below. Be sure to read all the details in each section. But the long and the short of it is that we couldn't be happier to have this young couple riding for us. Their first race on the Omni will be at 70.3 Indian Wells on December 8th. And that will also be Summer's first race as a pro! Keep your eyes out, and thanks for reading!
Like the rigs? Get all of the gear that Team Deal is riding here, sold exclusively in the TriRig Store!
