All

There’s a big difference between outside sponsorship at a brand level like we see on the road side and local dealership sponsorship like Mini, Volvo and Lotus in dh. Whilst they may be allowed to use the brand’s logo their deal is effectively with a local shop, not the actual manufacturer. The Tourne Campervan deal does seem to be with the brand itself but they do aftermarket mods, orders of magnitude smaller than an actual automotive manufacturer.

Axess and Nukeproof seem pretty obvious by now.

Many pages ago I had mentioned Finn’s MSA post race interview with WB where he was very clear that he was staying with Specialized next year. He was talking about how excited he was to be healthy going into the offseason and he and the team could carry better momentum into 2026 with the bike and its setup.

Does Finn riding a Specialized with suspension telemetry in mid-December put an end to any speculation of him making a team move or is the party still rocking till 12/31?

All this talk about smaller batteries to reduce unsprung mass on the rear end of a DH bike is interesting, but I kind of chuckle when I remember within the last year there were World Cup racers were janking together auto water dripping setup thingys to their bikes to cool their brakes.

I think that bird is supposed to be a phoenix

Yup, this thread is what brought me to Vital. So far I've just enjoyed reading, but with the impending closure, I decided it was worth making an account to cast my vote for annual versions of the tech-rumors thread.

Can I be honest, if I can't just click on one thread and read the entire conversation, I probably won't read the forum at all. I find this thread pulls me in and then when I have more time or I'm curious, I check out other threads. But without this main one, I wouldn't bother visiting vital. Wish it were different but I hope I'm at least helping by giving voice to some other people out there. I enjoy catching up on 6 pages of inane comments to find a nugget of cool rumors. Others might be different.

Don't worry everyone: I already had a meeting planned with @sspomer this afternoon, so I'll be sure to tell him on all of your behalf what a terrible person he is and how we're not mad, just disappointed.

@sspomer I totally get your decision from a web resourcing point of view. Things get really expensive really quick when you need to tack on more power. A lot of cloud hosting providers price exponentially instead of linearly. That being said, I think not pinning a v2 and keeping this way of chatting about rumors is a mistake. This thread works because it allows for banter along side rumors I wouldn't ever care about. Prime example is the Santa Cruz Vala, a bike I have negative interest in. However that did prompt the carcinization of bike suspension discussion (that prompted...

When I started this thread years ago (under an old username that I got locked out of... Still bummed about that @sspomer ) I never would have imagined to surpass 100 pages, let alone a thousand! Since I started the thread as a senior in high school, I have gone from a shop rat with too much free time to an industry employee who is bound by NDA's. I've had to keep my mouth and keyboard quiet on a ton of subjects, some of which have been pretty accurate to the ideas tossed around! I hope someday bike companies will...

That's one way to get a discount bro....slurp

Well to credit you all, this thread was Pinkbikes greatest research resource lol

The artist formerly known as Prince to Rogue Racing.

Pretty sure he's not getting sponsored by Title.

Saalbach*