The bloke that runs the workshop next to me has been doing a lot of Contis, more road attacks than sports, but has been getting good feedback. It's been all from Jap owners tho. The Sv650's seem to love 'em. I've always found Contis pretty good in the past. they wear well and cope with the wet. I wouldn't put them in the hyper sport bracket, although the sport attacks could go some way to them getting close?? Chris' comment about the designer is apparently true. He designed the diablo, then went to work for Conti. I personally don't have any experience of them and still suggest Diablos every time. I'm running corsa's at the moment and give them the edge over the stock ones. They are wearing very well. Not even 1000 miles to Assen squared them off.
There's a tire test in the new Sport Rider (I think it was) and they ran quite a few top tires. They ran the Conti Sport Attack and it didn't fair to well compared to the results of the others. Dunlop has a new coming out called simply the "Qualifier" which I think is replacing the 208 line up. It came out on top of the test. The Pilot Power and Bridgestone BT-014 (which is my recommendation) basically tied for second. Cool thing about this test is it was all on the street. No track time. Each tire was also tested on two different bikes for comparitave results. A GSXR 1000 and a CBR600RR. Great test. Best I've seen in a while, IMO. Very "real world" kinda test. I have the Powers on my 749 and the BT-014's on my SS. Very impressed with both but so impressed with the BT's that I will most likely be putting them on my 749 next. Honestly, for the street, they are so close it came down to looks for me as far as choosing the BT. But that's just me.
I'm looking at the Conti Sport attack tyre as a replacement for the 208RR's I have on the 916, read some pretty good reviews on them, I've found the 208's just dont feel right for me... So I'll give the Conti's a go....