Sort of what I said, alf, and I've been doing it for customers who aren't ready to spring for new wheels. These wheels have a J-shaped spoke, but the direction is reversed. The J goes into the rim with a proprietary alloy washer, and exits through the side, above the braking flat. The nipple is at the hub in a kind of nailhead arrangement.
Shimano made a spoke wrench that worked from the bottom of the nipple. One problem is when you use standard nipples, you need to use a standard spoke wrench, and it's tight quarters at the hub end of things. So you don't want to true a wheel with 16 of these. But it can be done if you have a thing for these wheels and you have a the time. Most shops won't touch them. The last time I saw one that wasn't in our shop for repair was hanging from a hook over the counter at Boulder Sports Recycling. That was a few years ago. Maybe it's still there.
Bontrager gave up on paired spokes around 2008 or '09. The spokes tended to crack at the nipple, especially under heavier riders. We'll occasionally get one for truing that isn't cracked. Most of them in our area have either been replaced or are sitting in garages on bikes that are no longer used. Giant had a paired-spoke wheel, too but that disappeared around the same time. It seemed more durable, but it was a lot heavier than the Bontragers. Campagnolo's boutique wheels used standard radial spoking in front and a triple pattern in the rear--one radial spoke from one side and a pair of tangential spokes from the other..This is sort of like Mavic's pattern, except Mavic spaced the spokes evenly around the wheel.
By passing the spoke through the side of the rim Shimano seems to have made a stronger wheel. But my rule is, if more than two or three spokes have broken, or they're starting to break more frequently, it's time to do something drastic. That is, either rebuild the wheel with new spokes and rim, or get a new wheel. The quality and condition of the hub, and the availability of spokes and rims will guide that decision.
It looks like Rolf is still making these wheels, but every Rolf wheel I've seen was on a bike that was at least eight years old. Maybe the triathletes are still buying Rolf wheels.
And "skip-lacing" a standard rim to work with a paired-spoke hub doesn't work because the holes in the hub are not at regular intervals and the skew between the left and right flanges does not correlate to the drill patter of a standard rim. I imagine someone out there has done this, but it would require different length spokes on the same side of the wheel.
