Steve Hed: A cycling big wheel

When the riders of the Tour de France mount their bikes today, they'll compete in a time trial that pits each athlete against the clock, an individual effort 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, with offices in a Shoreview office park.

"Steve has been working with aerodynamics for longer than many bike companies have been around," said Chuck McFarland, a product manager at Bontrager Wheel Systems, a wheel company owned by Trek Bicycle Corp. of Waterloo, Wis.

Three of the top six riders in the race this morning use wheels designed by Hed, including race favorite Alberto Contador and American cycling king Lance Armstrong, currently in fourth place.

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 at a Shakopee manufacturer. 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.

Hed Cycling's growth allowed Anne and Steve to abandon their original office in a White Bear Lake house and expand to an office in Shoreview.

"Partly, it's Lance riding your equipment. It's helped us," she said. "Besides the exposure, your product really does become better when it's being ridden by the pros." Hed Cycling boasts nearly a dozen locations around the world from the United Kingdom to New Zealand. Anne Hed declined to share specific sales figures but said sales have grown.

The company has factories in Spain and Mason City, Iowa, but all the wheels pass through Hed's Shoreview 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.

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 today 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.

Rider Ian Stanford, a three-time state time trial champion who lives in Winona, went to a wind tunnel in Charlotte, N.C., with Hed last April.

"It's a lot harder than it looks," he said. "There's resistance and the wind tunnel is blowing on you and you're often in positions that you wouldn't normally ride." Yet he came away from the experience learning that he would be a more powerful rider if he sat up higher on his bike, a counter-intuitive thought for riders who assume they'll be faster if they tuck themselves down low.

Stanford, who races for the state time trial championship Saturday in Scandia, said he's expecting to win a fourth title while riding on Hed wheels.

"Steve is definitely one of the hierarchy of cycling design. There's pretty much not a big name they don't work with," he said.

Pictures throughout the company's Shoreview offices attest to their high-caliber clients. Armstrong poses in a wind tunnel with Steve Hed and company employee Dino Edin in one photo, and jerseys signed by Contador and others hang on the walls.

The company sponsors some of the riders, providing them with wheels, but Hed Cycling also gets listed as the "technical and performance advisers" to one of the teams on this year's tour. Edin says there's a simpler way to think of it.

"We just make them go fast," he said.

Matt McKinney • 612-673-7329