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I just got a V10 this year, since my wife and I share bikes. She needed a tool to unlock speed. It is absolutely mind blowing. My first run on it made my EXT equipped Nomad feel like a hardtail. I switched bikes and had to pull over to see if there was something wrong with my Nomad!! I dropped probably 10 seconds off my race times, haven't lost a race on it. I stopped ruining wheels.
But.. when I'm at Bootleg waiting for the god damn shuttle I just want to get on the Nomad. When I'm at the park I just want to get to my hotel and it is such a pain in the ass to ride 2 miles uphill. And...the Nomad is faster and more fun on most bike park trails. I'll keep tweaking Big Pedalers to make them even better.
No doubt the kids I coach explode with speed when they get their first DH bike and I'm glad the tool for accelerated learning is available to them. You'll never know your true potential until you spend time on a true DH bike.
At Go-Ride we used to sell mostly DH, now we sell about 5 a year and that's mostly to the kids on our Team. Giant doesn't even import the Glory to the US anymore. How many Enduro bikes do we sell? 100 or more?
Blame the modern Enduro bike, but be thankful that all these people getting hooked on DH are growing the sport and more bike parks are opening all the time!
https://www.vitalmtb.com/features/Ultra-Long-210mm-Travel-Enduro-Machin…
they're are maybe one or two other bikes Id swap a DH for! I actually wanted this at mammoth because the trails are gnarly enough for a dh rig but you have to pedal pretty far from the lift to get to them, for instance its decent climb to get to DC-10 trail but that trail is way more fun on a DH so if these super enduro bikes using dual crowns become more popular then I will switch but until then DH is my bag!
I believe the rule was made up for the road world as tdf budgets exploded and the uci simply chose to apply it universally to all disciplines.
DH bikes are become more race cars where you use them to test things for your street cars(enduro/trail bikes).
-DH sales are down because modern Enduro bikes are so awesome.
-Modern DH bikes are more capable at descending than modern Enduro bikes.
-As bikes across the board have become better, more challenging trails have not been built. In fact, bike parks (once the domain of DH bike trails) have been building mostly easy trails to accommodate new riders on trail bikes.
The way I see it, if the industry continues in this direction, DH bikes will cease to exist in the next 10-20 years. WC DH bikes will just be Enduro bikes with a longer travel, dual-crown fork, and if events like Rampage and The Fest Series are still held, the riders will either also be on moded Enduro bikes, or they will be on special, non-production bikes.
Personally, I think the industry is shooting itself in the foot on this. Lift/Shuttle Bike parks should be making trails to suit a large range of riding levels, but they should focus on people riding those trails on bikes that suck to pedal uphill. Otherwise, why would I pay to be taken up when I can do it myself for free? I imagine that is why many of these parks don't cater to the Nordic Ski crowd nearly to the degree they do the Alpine Ski and Snowboard groups.
So if we don't want the DH bike to go the way of the Dodo, what can we do to encourage lift/shuttle bike parks to build trails that make buying a DH bike worth it?
Or is the real problem that manufacturers, bike shops and media aren't doing enough to promote DH bikes?
Or is the problem all in my head?
Same reason why Enduro sales are booming....
Oisin O'Callaghan who just swept junior WC DH grew up at the bottom of Ireland's (possibly the world's) easiest bike park (his dad was involved in running it). It is pretty much an XC/trail bike park where 140mm is already too much bike, you go there to pedal 60km on nice flowy hardpacked trails (I really like the trails there, don't get me wrong).
So don't worry about kids building up skills, bike parks have their place and it is fine if they mostly go the flowy/jump line route to cater to that demand. Kids will always huck down a gully off the beaten path.
BTW it's true bike parks are perfectly enjoyable with a good enduro bike, but I don't think it's because trails are easier, at least not all of them. Big bike parks are building jump trails (which I think are the evolutions of those boring plain flow trails built when parks were popping up everywhere) and those are probably more enjoyable with a enduro bike or with a freeride dh bike (like commencal's furious). But the "old" trails are just not hard, technical, steep, gnarly enough to mandate riding a dh bike. However enduro bikes have evolved plenty enough to ride those trails. IMO, this is a big factor why people seem to opt for enduro rigs instead of dh bike. I live close to many bike parks and I have to say, there are just 2 trails that are really worthy of a dh racing bikes and I'm often a bit frustrated about this, because I like to ride "proper" dh tracks and I race. If I didn't race and if I wasn't a park rat I'd go for an enduro bike myself.
I see dh bikes going away if we don't see some differentiation in bike parks trails in the near future.
Steep, challenging terrain is not a prerequesite to building skill. Lots of riding time is.
For me also the kind of cycling is different. When we are on the enduro bike we rather tend to ride as many different trails as possible but each one usually only once. Usually slower technical trails or flow/jump trails. On the downhill bike for me it was much more a race like approach: riding one track over and over again. Becoming more precise every time. Hitting jumps I would not hit on the first run, not caring about the bike no matter how rough the track is, ...
Sometimes on our enduro rides we ride a track we usually rode on our DH bikes. For me this feels so wrong as in my head I know how fast we where going back then. But if I ride such a track maybe the first time for over a year I wont hit a jump with a blind landing - they might have changed it. Or I don't double a section because it might become close afterwards if I'm not exactly on the right line. Or I "search" through a rock garden not hitting my EXO oder DD tires and rims too hard where with the DH bike you just go for the straight line. Of course we could ride the track more often on the enduro bike. But do I really want to torture it that way? Ok, I could set up the enduro bike that it becomes closer to a DH bike. But I'm sure it wont pedal as good and it wont be as funny as before on the flow trails or smaller jump trails.
I sold my last DH bike 15 years ago.. At that point I had ridden it twice within the last year and I needed the money.. With my Slash, I've ridden trails that used to be reserved for the DH bike and I didn't have to push the bike up to the top.. Last DH bike I rode was a rental, so it wasn't a good experience... Harsh on the fork, undersprung out back.. Hit the same trails on the Slash later on and that confirmed an Enduro rig was enough for me..
In my current situation, a bike that I can ride more places is better than a bike I can only ride with lift access or a shuttle. Would I buy a DH bike again? Only if I move to the mountains and I am close to a chairlift... That's about the only way I could justify it..
https://www.haibikeusa.com/emountain/dwnhll.html
If i spend the most on the bike i ride the most, and the DH bike is second or third priority, that means i'm looking at a bike a few years old. and if the few year old DH bike isn't any faster or more capable than my enduro, why even own it? especially now that my shorter travel bike isn't holding me back in any situation outside of racing?
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