When all I ever rode was cantis I thought they were good stoppers but that was with motorcycle style brake levers; make sure you do your stopping from the drops, were you can use the end of the brake lever to give you the maximum amount of leverage; cantis don't stop well at all braking from the hoods. Also don't expect that the brakes are setup right. Check out this site http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-...-brake-service and check the Vertical Height Alignment, Tangent Alignment and specifically the Vertical Face Alignment. Next, don't expect the cantis to stop anywhere near as easily as the V's. The modulation of cantis often comes in the form of maximum hand strength to slow or stop the bike. Since the bike is new it does take a bit of time wear in the OEM brake pads, which are a fairly hard compound, so if you don't have 200 miles or so with the brakes, they still need some brake in time. The Kool Stop pads are softer and tend to break-in and stop a little better, but they also wear faster.