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Id bet money she's not the only one in the household making the switch...
I second the outside sponsors support. Go back 15-20 years plus and there were quite a few teams sponsored by car brands. GT/Chevrolet, Giant/Toyota, Trek/VW, Mondraker/Suburu, Kona/Ford Focus to name a few. Plus the MTB World Cup series being sponsored by Nissan and Mercedes in the past as well. Kinda surprised it isn't kinda still a thing, as teams and riders all need wheels to move around.
Maybe motor brands don't see the value of sponsoring a sport that's unfamiliar to a lot of people and athletes they've never heard of.....something that's quite apparent this side of the pond. Unless you're clad in lycra riding a bike with drop bars and take performance enhancing drugs, the UK media and British Cycling aren't interested. But that's a rant for another thread probably...
There's a GT/Viris youth development team in the UK run by Andy Ward who runs Viris, and I vaguely remember seeing something on the gram a while back that they had some big plans for this year, so wonder if he's going global on the youth development. The Griffiths lads were both on the team in the past.
Post your rant in the 'Illegal Trails' thread. I'm sure the big auto makers would just love, love, being forcibly associated with a bunch of hooligans trespassing if not committing crimes against the eco-structure for their 'sport'.
,,,you were saying?
Yeah pretty sure cam cole who was the team manager for gt factory has quite a bit to do with viris brand in nz and this new race team
As I get ready for bed, I know that my excitement for what may be announced tomorrow is going to get me up a bit earlier. It's like one of those wrapped gifts you find a few weeks later that someone forgot to put under the tree....see you tomorrow.......DN!
Did the Fugazi get your 90s scene kid self-righteousness going? I mean the irony of auto makers being upset with “crimes against the eco-structure” is a bit much. Pretty fine line between the environmental crimes of unsanctioned trail building and the use of large earth movers to build legal trail. Also derailing the team rumors thread? Again?? Must be the end of silly season. Maybe you can take the trail crimes debate to Trinidad, Colorado. https://www.vitalmtb.com/forums/hub/trinidad-colorado
So - you endorse poaching land for your hobby? And - because you're able to 'justify' efforts by way of what-aboutisms, everyone else is on board, even if they're not?
Sorry bud, MTB had soul once upon a time. That's long gone. It's just beating itself into the ground at this point.
Also - I wasn't the one to derail the thread.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s… On another note, I hope frecklegate gets discussed on a future B Practice Podcast.
The admittedly unclear implication was that “we” derailed the thread and I neither endorsed unsanctioned trails nor demonized them. I just gave us a new place to argue about it. I am keenly aware of and sensitive to the potential for unsanctioned trails to impact legal access. I more took issue with the term eco-crimes and the idea that these trails cause any more meaningful damage than legal trails which seemed a bit extreme in the grand scheme of the late capitalist human shitshow. I will say that the original sin of American MTB occurred in a place where to this day it is mostly illegal to ride singletrack and whether any of us like it or not the historical “soul” of our sport is inexorably tied to riding unsanctioned trails. And, for the sake of staying vaguely on topic, generations of North American gravity racers likely would not have developed the skills necessary to compete on European tracks without them.
Had to find my old login just to upvote this post.
Who wants to bet it's not a Fezz?
I'm butt hurt by the down votes ppl!
I want action on this one!
I am not too familiar with the sponsorship timelines... but I did see where Trek/VW ended in 08... right around the time of the market/auto industry crash. I am assuming the others were around that timeline. Once they got out of that situation.. they found other ways of marketing? Just a guess?
Ford sponsors the Rockrider team.
Not long ago Reece Wilson was sponsored by Volvo, and Emily Batty by Porsche. And Mathieu Van der Poel is a Lamborghini ambassador.
Dang. I must be getting old because when I think GT, it's Acura. And when you say Toyota, it's Schwinn.
Are there news or rumours regarding Canyon CLLCTV enduro team? Jesse all by himself, Party Boi and Bomba dropped to get money to hire Daprela for DH? Will Scarsi get a pump up to CLLCTV team from the Dainese Pirelli team?
So many questions.
Bulldog to Zerode Bikes.
You are odd mate. The “soul” you are talking about was founded on illegal trails. Go back to the other site
Blenki to zerode, brook to forbidden
Cam Cole just confirmed the new team here and the first few partners.
https://www.instagram.com/stories/camcolemtb/3286875660039391571?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igsh=MTRsYXcxcjB1YWoxaQ==
Might be nothing but it seems Danny Hart is riding a Nukeproof bike on the latest Ed Masters story. Could be trolling or just a rent bike, or?
Must be the time of year to leave the thread I suppose.
As every year, Ive enjoyed the daily read, and keeping up with the latest by the die hards in here, so cheers to you all!
But it seems we're now into the constant repetition of "just spotted" that have been discussed over the last 20 pages of the forum - pushing out the page count - as mentioned a few pages earlier.
Til next year
Quitter.
Did it happen yet? I'm awake.
To me it's not just something that seems missing, but also seems very weird that it's not happening.
The argument that gravity events do not draw the right exposure is a red herring, too. My son's little leage team - a bunch of 8 year old miscreants, some of whom do not even want to be there, let alone play in front of crowd totalling 12 parents and one umpire receives 10k from a LOCAL home depot .. and then there are others who only ask that a cardboard sign held by two metal wires be put up at games. The all star traveling teams at age 12 get thousands of dollars from other sponsors to travel teh US and for bats and gloves etc.
I think some onus has to be on racers and team managers. Money is out there to get. The economy in the US is booming like crazy and support is a nice write off for corporations. With a little effort, my grassroots enduro team raised 15k this offseason.
Home Depot, Lowes, McDonalds...they will all give you money. For some reason also, there is this biases towards motor sponsors - like cars...
You're trying to tell me that Just For Men or Oxy, products purposefully designed for the demographic that attends mountain bike events would not be susceptible to the right pitch?
The fix could be as simple as a few teams collectively hiring a marketing consultant to put together a slide deck and make the rounds. Lawyers do this, they pool money to pay for billboards and commercials on a rotating basis. Construction firms also comingle funds to share expneses.
All that said, it's not a fezzari.
Im guessing around 7am PST, that seem to be the time.
re: outside industry sponsors for American(and global) MTB racing.
Yes, 2008 was the final year of Trek/VW because 2007 was fhe final year of USAC’s National Mountain Bike Series(NMBS) and the contract was obviously not renewed, since there was literally nothing left worth attending.
The NMBS was the creaky, sad skeleton of the NORBA national series- which at that point had turned into a product that USAC first allowed Team Big Bear and then the crew that used to be behind Sea Otter to license and run. Since 2008 we have had no actual centrally planned and run domestic elite mtb series, just a “calendar”.
Without someone working full time on marketing the actual sport of mtb racing, it fell apart.
Without a multi-stop, multi-discipline national series, it isn’t possible to get enough humans in a parking lot to make real sponsorship viable. Gravity alone is far to small. XC is small too- because we don’t have a real national series, so our most elite domestic xc teams seem more like clubs than jobs.
The only “true” National Mtb race in America is the TN National. More brave promoters need to start bringing xc and gravity back together at the same venue at the same time if there is a desire to see athlete and staff salaries improve for American bike racers.
In Euroland- while heck, the same company that owns Cannondale and GT and Cervelo and Santa Cruz worldwide is the largest VW dealer in the world, is responsible for exporting all VW group cars(including the super car brands)to North America, etc the Ford/Rockrider sponsorship is via Ford in France, not the mothership in the USA. Could Pon leverage the fact that they pretty much control the flow of German cars out of Europe to get more than just a loaner lambo for the highest profile athelete they sponsor? Probably! But do they need to?
So basically...our corporate masters don't need to pay us anything if we work for pennies to turn around and give all our disposable income right back to them in exchange for churros & half can of Monster Zero Calorie
I at least have an idea that his tires are Michelin Wild AM2 competition. I thought Fezzari was just for YouTubers, so I’ll go along with you this once.
It's officially official - Dak has joined Mondraker Factory Racing. Video interview and podcast are live now. We recorded this last week, so we will have to cover #frecklegate in the next podcast haha
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