Litespeed rolls into Beijing and beyond

For most athletic equipment manufacturers, producing gear for Olympic athletes would be their ultimate achievement.

For Ooltewah-based American Bicycle Group, maker of Litespeed bicycles, sending its product halfway around the world to the Olympic Games in China is no big deal. The company has had its sights set on Mars for more than a year.

Litespeed is working with two athletes who will compete in the Games, which begin Friday with the opening ceremonies in Beijing. But company engineers also recently completed work on a project with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., to develop components for the Mars Science Laboratory. In mid-2009, NASA will launch the unmanned mobile science station on a mission to Mars, where it will travel across the planet’s surface and conduct several experiments.

“It’s certainly a huge benefit for our company,” Litespeed marketing director Joe Bowers said last week. “Because it changes the way you think about building a bicycle ... when you get asked to build a suspension tube for the Mars rover.”

Litespeed employees and engineers said the challenges of producing a high-quality bicycle for Olympic athletes — as well as some of the best professional cyclists in the world — is in many ways similar to working with demanding scientists in the aerospace industry.

The lessons learned making bicycles have literally taken them out of this world.

“Working for a bicycle company that has gotten involved in the aerospace industry, a lot of folks have asked me if I’ve heard of Orville and Wilbur Wright,” Mr. Bowers said. “Bicycles are simple machines, but they’re tricky when it comes to repair. ... I’m not surprised that it was bicycle mechanics that pioneered flight. It’s that mentality of tinkering with things and enjoying it so much that you’re going to keep doing it until you get it right.”

LOCAL BEGINNINGS

Litespeed was founded as Southeast Machine by the Lynskey family. In the 1970s, Southeast Machine was a metal fabrication company, producing metal parts for various industries. The company began working with titanium to produce tubing for the Tennessee Valley Authority’s use in nuclear plants and TVA hydroelectric dams.

“The titanium tubing was used primarily for running electrical cables through concrete walls that were several feet thick, and they wanted something in that wall that would last forever,” Mr. Bowers said. “And so titanium was chosen. It’s noncorrosive and has an infinite life span.”

As the company gained more experience working with titanium in the 1980s, David Lynskey, then a younger member of the family and an aspiring cyclist, saw the potential for using titanium to build lighter, stronger bicycles. After some years of trial and error, the Lynskeys perfected the art of making high-quality titanium bicycles. Litespeed was born.

During the 1990s, Litespeed gained a reputation for producing the top-quality bikes that avid racers demand. In 1999, the Lynskey family sold Litespeed to the American Bicycle Group, which acquired rival titanium bike manufacturer Merlin as well as carbon fiber bikemaker Quintana Roo.

In recent years, many pro cyclists have sought out Litespeed bicycles for use in some of the world’s top races. Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong commissioned a Litespeed Edge to use as a time trial bike in the race. Robbie McEwen, one of the world’s top sprinters and a past winner of the green sprinter’s jersey at the Tour de France, has ridden Litespeed bicycles in competition.

OLYMPIC DREAMS

In this year’s Olympic Games, mountain bike rider Geoff Kabush of Canada will race on a Litespeed Ocoee, and Portuguese triathlete Vanessa Fernandes will compete on a Litespeed Ghisallo.

Ms. Fernandes is the 2007 world champion in women’s triathlon and was runner-up in 2006.

Mr. Kabush is a four-time Canadian mountain bike champion and 2007 cyclocross champion for Canada. A professional rider with the Litespeed-sponsored Team Maxis Mountain Bike team, he has competed in road cycling races as well, finishing 31st in the 2005 Tour de Georgia.

Brad DeVaney, engineering manager for American Bicycle Group, works extensively with top-level athletes such as Ms. Fernandes and Mr. Kabush to make sure the Litespeed bicycles meet their expectations.

Working with these athletes for the Olympics gives added exposure to the company and its products.

“To us at Litespeed, the Olympics are just another high-level race,” Mr. DeVaney said. “It has an economic impact (among fans) in the athlete’s home countries. ... You want to be like your heroes.”

MISSION TO MARS

For all its success in the world of athletics, Litespeed’s future may lie in outer space with its work on the Mars Science Laboratory. Its success in that field was a direct result of its longtime expertise with titanium and bicycles.

Jaime Waydo is the lead mechanical engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab working on the Mars Science Laboratory project. The mobile laboratory is a vehicle about the size of a small car that will carry several scientific instruments to Mars to continue the exploration begun by previous Mars rovers already on the Red Planet.

“It has more science instruments that we’ve ever sent to Mars before,” Mrs. Waydo said by telephone from the Southern California research facility. “We’ve got effectively an organic chemistry lab on board the vehicle.”

In 2007, Mrs. Waydo was working on developing the suspension and drivetrain for the MSL, and she and her colleagues at the lab ran into trouble developing custom-formed titanium tubing for the vehicle’s suspension system.

“We couldn’t find anyone who could make the suspension tubes that we wanted,” Mrs. Waydo said. “And my husband, who is an avid cyclist, suggested that we start looking to a bicycle company.

“I asked him who was known in the industry as a leader in titanium bicycles, and he said without hesitation, ‘Litespeed.’”

After looking at some of the work done with the titanium tubing on Litspeed bikes, Mrs. Waydo contacted Litespeed in Ooltewah and began working with Mr. DeVaney and other Litespeed engineers to develop the components needed for the Mars mission.

Mrs. Waydo said Litespeed’s titanium work was far superior to anything that the lab or NASA was able to produce on its own. The enthusiasm and dedication of the team of engineers and employees at Litespeed’s plant in Ooltewah impressed her even more.

“They’re very much excited about the engineering and wanting to solve problems,” Mrs. Waydo said “... They want to help you solve the research part of the problem.”

With Litespeed’s contribution to the Mars mission complete, Mrs. Waydo and her team now are putting the vehicle together in California and aiming to launch the mission in just over a year for its journey.

Working with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab helped Litespeed learn more about how to build better bicycles — and hopefully help athletes better compete for gold in the Olympic Games, Mr. DeVaney said.

“The sharing of ideas and technologies is something that has had a great influence on us,” Mr. DeVaney said. “Our quality systems, our quality programs have improved and been enhanced just through associating with a higher level of customer.

“That’s not to say our bicycle customers aren’t as important or not at as high a standard as JPL. But then again, they’re not riding to Mars.”