LA harbour managers in dispute with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union are currently successfully blockading the port of Los Angeles and others, something of a major crisis for the West Coast of America (and the US economy, it's currently losing $1bn a day thanks to the lock-out). And the classy Selle Royal booth is sitting on a dockside truck, and will be too late for setting up at Interbike.

US dockers prevent Italian saddle-maker from having sexy stand at Interbike

The Selle Royal stand will not be quite as attention-grabbing as the one praised by all quarters last year.

Selle Royal’s Steve Carr told Bikebiz.co.uk that the LA port strike meant it would be highly unlikely the Italian saddlemaker would have its arty booth on show at Las Vegas.

"It takes four days to build so even if we got it now, I don’t know how we’d be able to build it."

For pix of what last year’s stand looked like, use the link below.

UPDATE:

Selle Royal pulled out all the stops and have produced a classy looking stand in just 24 hours. Apart from the gel ‘amoeba’ chair it doesn’t look too much different to last year’s award-winning stand. Look In and Fizik saddles were supplied by BikeMine, Selle Royal’s US distributor and the company called in a stand contractor to construct the white-walled, well-lit stand. In fact, this is the same (Italian-owned) stand contractor that Selle Royal used in 1999 when it last lost its stand. That time the stand was shipped to Nebraska by mistake. Lightning never strikes twice?

Other companies affected by the port lock-out (LA harbour is the third biggest port in the world) include Germany’s Sigma Sport and Taiwan’s Velo Enterprises – both their stands are still in the docks. Sigma Sport also constructed an excellent looking stand in super-quick time.

The port lock-out is impacting on US bike shipments: Pacific Cycle, Giant and others, all have hundreds of containers sitting dockside, not able to move.

PIC ABOVE: The Madison contingent at Interbike on the impressively-improvised Selle Royal stand

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