RE: limiter @Easton_Cycling
There are a number of mid-travel and mid-'strength' forks out in the world with 20thru (some RS Rebas and Revs, for example) that are right in the "trail" category. Front hubs and endcaps are one of the simplest places to build broad compatibility into the design, and to purposefully limit that. It's lame. Making 15QR some touchstone for product use, when it's an arbitrary, often marketing driven standard-ish. Just be up front about the intended use. It's such a patronizing move to try to make parts incompatible.

This reads suspiciously like a corporate press-release. Why do reviewers feel the need to insert so much speculative, kool-aid-drinking b.s. into an otherwise simple review. "I got one. It fits sloppy. It ventilates well. It looks great. It's relativeley expensive. I didn't crash on my head during the test period." Period. Here's the giveaway: "MIPS utilizes a low friction layer on the inside of the helmet liner to absorb much of the energy created by both unilateral or oblique blows to the head" Go find your old physics text books. Low friction systems do not absorb a bunch of crash energy. Like, by definition. Uh-oh! VitalMTB comments are not an appropriate place to diagram out a complicated mechanical argument, so let me nip that in the bud by saying this is less about MIPS and more about bike journo websites being full of shills. The latest in safety, the best protection? OK, evidence, please. Or keep it simple and don't make the claims.

You are all forgetting what "pro racing" is. The only reason there is a class above Expert is so that the competitors can act as sport and brand ambassadors. For that, they get paid enough money to try to keep them visible as ambassadors. Because it is still a competitive sport, and because the pro level is for people who would otherwise be the best of the experts, you have to pay people enough to make it worth their time to not only be better than the world's amateur racers, but also be a public figure. Because pros stitch together their annual salaries from a bunch of different sources, it's a dance trying to figure out how much to pay for winning an event. But the undercurrent in this little thread, that rewards for racing should be "fair," and that because women are slower than men that should affect how much they get paid is so childish. Part of what a woman pro racer brings to the table is being a woman, and unless you want to start racing, doing interviews, and shooting web series in convincing drag, you should leave it to them. This is a business, and it even seems to make life a little better for all of us who ride for the love of the sport and race for new tires.