Scotia, N.Y., bike shop benefits from Lance Armstrong's successes.

Byline: Kevin Harlin

Jul. 28--The shelves in Bill Lewis' small shop are lined with water bottles and assorted bicycle components. Trek mountain bikes and road bikes stand in racks and hang from hooks in the ceiling.

Set apart is a yellow jersey, framed and mounted behind glass on one wall.

It's a salute to the Tour de France and to Lance Armstrong -- the man Lewis and others say is leading a resurgence in interest in the sport of cycling -- and sales of road bikes.

Call it the Lance Effect.

"If someone comes in here and asks for a road bike, I don't have much left to show them," said Lewis, who has run his Scotia bike shop in the same North Ballston Avenue storefront for 29 years.

While bicycle sales overall have been relatively flat, shop sales of street bikes -- mostly high-end products designed for long, serious rides -- rose 8 percent in 2003, according to the Bicycle Product Suppliers Association. The Pennsylvania-based industry group tracks sales in bicycle shops -- not bikes sold at mass-market stores such as Wal-Mart.

At the same time, mountain bike sales -- the biggest seller through the 1990s -- fell off almost 22 percent.

Mountain bikes are still the bulk of sales at most shops, and made up 51 percent of all units sold from a shop in 2003, according the association. But that was down from 53 percent the year before.

Road bikes made up just 6 percent of specialty shop bikes sold in 2002, but climbed to 8 percent in 2003.

With accessories such as pedals that clip on to special shoes, and bicycle computers that track speed, cadence and other factors, high-end road bikes can easily cost many thousands of dollars.

Lewis' bikes run the gamut from a few hundred dollars to a $2,500 model similar to one used by Armstrong in earlier Tours de France.

Of course, Armstrong -- the svelte cancer-survivor who wrapped up an unprecedented sixth Tour de France win on Sunday -- is only part of the story of the road-bike's turnaround, said Marc Sani, publisher of the trade magazine Bike Retailer and Industry News.

"I don't want to take away from the Lance Effect in any way, but you have to put it into perspective," Sani said. "If you start thinking about it, there are half a dozen reasons why road bikes are more important than they were just a few years ago."

For instance, there are aging baby boomers, many of whom have disposable income and sore knees from years of hard-impact sports such as running.

And communities across the country are spending more on bicycle paths and bike-friendly road designs.

"It's hard to really point directly and say that because of Lance Armstrong, we've sold this many bikes," said Fred Clements, executive director of the National Bicycle Dealers Association, the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based trade group. "But it's maybe not a big coincidence that we've been selling more and more road bikes."

Even if Armstrong can't take sole credit, he hasn't hurt the sport.

"He's on the cover of People magazine and a lot of other publications not usually featuring cyclists," said Mike Schmalandt, western region business manager for Serotta Competition Bicycles, the Saratoga Springs maker of high-end road bikes.

So what if Armstrong decides to sit out next year's Tour de France?

Lewis said his Scotia bicycle shop will do just fine.

"I think that market has grown bigger than that now," he said.

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