Hello Vital MTB Visitor,
We’re conducting a survey and would appreciate your input. Your answers will help Vital and the MTB industry better understand what riders like you want. Survey results will be used to recognize top brands. Make your voice heard!
Five lucky people will be selected at random to win a Vital MTB t-shirt.
Thanks in advance,
The Vital MTB Crew
This question is also relevant going back 2 or more years, right? 🤣
It makes me reflect on recent history. How there used to be a multitude of downhill designs out there the teams were racing on. You didn’t typically see the same frame on different teams as much, except for the old Intense M1 era.
Not trying to derail. Just noting a sign of the times.
If there were a shallow transition across a long gravel road where you genuinely had to sprint your butt off to compete, would a Commencal Supreme hamper the effort?
Never ridden one, but they don't put that big pulley on their enduro rigs
.
Maybe we just need some World Cups where you have to pedal to win that the Frenchies might have to get on a plane for or eat food off a menu they can't pronounce.
Watching World Cup these days is like ESPN only showing UGA home games.
Sounds like a World Cup at Fontana would be perfect
They just bitch and moan the whole time its not in Europe. All the snowshoe interviews last year were whining about the rocks and grade.
There was talk of Finn's contract being up and having a look around, could be him.
Big fan of snowshoe. Both riding there as a customer and watching world cups as a spectator. But riding hareball 3 days in a row and risking your life on it in a race run doesn’t sound super fun to me.
But that’s also the beauty of professional racing. Snowshoe regularly delivered great racing, a mix up in results, and was the only round in the us at the time. Impossible to argue the stop wasn’t good for the sport and added variety to the schedule.
And then dudes from the UK win it.
They gotta really hate that part.
2/4 WC races in showshoe has been won by french riders since 2021 (Loic and Amaury) and only 1 from the UK (Reece) so idk. The other one was Oisin last year.
Atherton pulling out of racing seems like a stretch to me. Family is all about racing, in every aspect. I get the vibe that as long as they are building bikes, they are racing. Maybe they drop back on their rider budget and do something similar to Union? The DH bike is obviously very good and has results.
Finn leaving Specialized would be huge. Its all he has raced. Hard time seeing him leave, now. I do wonder how much longer Loic will be around though. He has hinted that he wont stay around as long as Greg did and wants to go out on top. Maybe Loic rides out 2025 and Asa fills the spot in 2026? Neko confirmed in the downtime podcast that ASA is staying through 2025 to honor his 2 year contract, despite multiple people making offers now. (Asa value only goes up as he continues to ride more)
Max to slowly have every top French rider via multiple well funded teams. The French cup will just be the ranking order of his riders.
I assume Oisin isn't in the UK?
I've not read a map in a bit. UK adjacent good enough?
From the WynTV inteview with Benoit, it sounds like he hasn't made a decision yet. At the very end he says, I've got to ride some different bikes before MSA. Also sounds like he feels like a lot of the big name teams spend too much of their money on marketing fluff and not enough on the race program, which is what he really cares about.
Finn was on LaPierre with Bruni & Loris as a junior
Did he go to Specialized on his 2nd year junior or Elite? I remember the story of him meeting the guy who runs the specialized team after whip off at Crank works... I assumed that was pretty early on?
My memory is vague as I've had over 4 million beers since, but LaPierre turned into Specialized Gravity. It's the same core team with a different hat and bikes.
AFAIK he's been w/ Laurent Delorme the whole time (LaPierre and Spec as @brash mentioned).
This episode of the Downtime has a bunch of the details on how he got Finn to join: https://www.downtimepodcast.com/laurent-delorme/
It was Q Bikes originally with Cathro, Mick Pascal and Spagnolo. Then Lapierre with Vouillioz, Hart, Blenki and eventually Loris and Loic. Pretty impressive evolution over the years.
Benny to Pivot !
Yeah, can’t see them without a factory team. They can put down a new frame in a very short amount of time, look at Specialized, Pivot and Intense all of them followed the same path for prototyping. They do a lot of testing and this is what top riders are looking for. If there is a team that can pull out a sponsor that’s not from the industry they are.
Where does that FMD to YT rumor come from? They’ve never sponsored anything besides the mob and they have a huge new factory setup to support. With them being a relatively small brand and the current state of the market I don’t realy see them doing anything else.
If anything another male elite rider would be a good fit for the mob.
The Irish would like to have a stern, profanity-filled word with you
FMD is an interesting one as I could imagine nearly every brand would want Tahnee but not necessarily the whole FMD program.
Kolb to YT purely because he's Austrian although I'm hoping that Atherton are staying at the races .
Im amazed you can read at all tbh
I’ll eat a decently sized bite of my hat if Finn leaves specialized. The bike and team setup seem to work for him, and their partnership with Öhlins seems to be a bit more in depth than what other teams have with Fox and RS. Specialized also doesn’t seem to give too much of a damn about sponsor correctness as long as they run Ö suspension and magura brakes and get on the podium.
IF he changes it would be for the number 1 spot on a team. But what team could offer him that spot and a similar level of support as specialized?
FMD have the same problem Atherton did. To sponsor their marquee rider you have to pay for the entire team as well (and FMD have always had a weak lineup apart from Tahnee). In the end Atherton had to start their own brand (with outside investment) as there was no one left willing to spend that much ......Also Tony is a dick.
The days of them being sponsored by Nissan or Jeep are long gone (they used to be one of the very few directly sponsored by Shimano). Rach and Gee were their draw to non endemic promotion.
Dan and Rach are busy with the bike park (which is not a big money spinner) ,Gee is off doing Gee things (riding down mountains). I've heard from people who interviewed there,the bike side is a bit of a shitshow commercially.
It doesn't matter how good the bike is if they can't afford to spend half a million pounds a year to go racing.
tell me you are american without telling me you are american
Different type of relationship
Id love to see a commercial CTO program (of any product) that isn't a shit show. LOL
What about the Syndicate? The new corporate overlords must be asking questions when the only results they’ve had this year are from Ollie Davis who I’d bet is on a significantly lower salary than the rest of the team. Laurie’s had an unlucky run lately but I could see him moving over to intense factory with Olly Morris whenever his contract is up.
Could the syndicate be after a second big hitter to keep the show on the road if Jackson gets injured again? Reese Wilson or Kolb would be a great fit IMO.
Listening to Neko on the Downtime podcast he talks about needing a threshold amount of WC points to be an Elite team next year. I'd not heard about this before, has it always been a thing?
yes, however the required # of points increased in recent years IIRC
Does that put Pivot at risk? Bernard has had a bit of shocker ,Jenna injured and Eddie and Matt havn't raced dh at all.
Post a reply to: 2025 Team Rumors