As the consumer market heated up the "racing wheels" label gave way to "high performance" and in the quest to be king of the hill with the most 'robust wheels available' it became common for wheels like the Rolfs Prima Vigor Tandem, Bontrager Race Lite Tandem and Santana's Shimano DuraAce / Sweet 16's to tout that they were strong enough for daily use or, in some cases, it was suggested they were even stronger than 40h conventional wheels. Consumers being consumers consumed all of this and go-fast 'performance wheels' ended up on all kinds of tandems that really would have been better served by conventionally built, component wheelsets, i.e., the tandem market simply mirrored the single bike marketing trends.

It took me a looong time to even start playing around with low spoke count wheels, first on my single bike with MAVIC Cosmos Elites and then Campy G3 Eurus wheelsets. It wasn't until 2008 when we bought the Calfee that I even ventured into the Rolfs, mostly as an experiement to see if I could quantify the purported ' performance enhancing' features for an average, recreational tandem team. As it turns out, most of my original impressions and opinions regarding 'performance wheels' was fairly sound and you can see that reflected in my comments and validated by spending my own $$ on various different wheelsets for the sake of curiosity.

Today, even with a set of Rolfs and Topolino's on hand, we still do our every day rides on a pair of 36h Velocity Deep-Vs with White Ind hubs, also our default for tours and out of town events. We'll sometimes throw on the Rolfs or Topolino's for show at rallies or other group rides or to get that slight go-fast pacebo effect, but if we didn't have the go-fast wheels I surely wouldn't miss them.