I should point out that most keirin riders are still using the square taper dura-ace cranks, which are still in production in Japan. The Octalink versions are the favorites of the international level guys because of stiffness. I have heard of two recent studies of cranks that yielded some interesting info. First off I heard it through the industry grapevine that when Sram was doing their testing of cranks when developing Red the dura-ace track crank was used as the benchmark for stiffness (which could be true as it never seems to show up in any published test by any company or magazine). The other study supposedly came from Shimano or the Australian national team and found that external bearing cranks just create to much rolling resistance in track applications. Look at it this way... if the top national federations like AIS and British Cycling pump millions into their track programs and yet still choose conventional internal bearing crank systems they must have a good reason. It's not like they could not just use 130bcd track rings on an existing outboard bearing crank system or simply develop their own crank like Walser did.