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You sound as if Maxxis tires are all the sudden unrideable. I'm glad Maxxis has competition now but calling them "the dogs breakfast" is fried. You don't ride like Moimoi - you'll be fine on exo+... (or if you actually know how to ride, doubledown).

I hate how much tires cost and will complain every time I have to buy new ones, BUT, the reality is, when we're paying $130-150(cad) per tire, it would be like buying Michelin Cup 2 R's or or BFG Baja T/A KR3. Those are super high performance tires that are $1000+ each and made for Porsche's, Ferrari's and trophy trucks. And let's be honest, in the world of bikes, most of us are riding Porsche's, Ferrari's and trophy trucks. I still hate that we have to spend $130+ on tires.

Hot take: MTB tires are a luxury item and priced accordingly. Edit: @saskskier beat me to it.

Super stoked to see a Heat, LCQ and Main. Even more stoked to see more women for the final as the current limit of 10 is just ridiculous.

Maybe teams will consolidate together to fit in the limited spots?

Continental Series - What is this? Which continents? Which races? ESO/WBD-specific races or tacked on to existing events that "earn points"? Continents? Come on have we not learned already there is only one when it comes to bikes. Europe.

UCI is only rule enforcement and legislative side of cycling This will be WBD all about TV baby!

I think it's WBD that are behind these changes, rather than the UCI (although I guess you can hold them responsible for handing over the reins).

1. An application that could use the hell outta this is fat bike tires. Likely a minority in this thread, but getting a bigger, floatier contact patch without having to drop to low single digits would be a helluvalot of fun, what with making a zippier experience on snow or beach days. 2. Getting a casing that damps out vibration better will allow suspension to work better. Watch any of the super slow mo huck to flat vids and you can see the hiccup the rebounding tires adds to the suspension action, basically bouncing the bike a bit before the...

Have run lots of ski demos....that 20% that want to tell you how everything is wrong will also take up 90% of your time.

Having run plenty of demo days I'd say it's about 30% just having a go on an expensive bike for free, 20% just telling you what is wrong with the bike, 20% "just confirming that my bike IS better", 20% "I'm thinking of replacing my 2011 bike in the next 3-5 years" , 9% having one of the bikes on a shortlist but "I'm going to buy whatever I get the best deal on" and 1% actually going on to buy something from the demo. A couple a year was more than enough to never want to do it again.

Demos seem like a great thing to do with all that extra inventory right? Is the bottleneck getting van drivers? I'm just not going to commit thousands of dollars to a high pivot trail bike without taking one out for an actual ride first. I feel like this mentality also applies to "core" riders and ebikes.

MTB = Monetary, Tariff, & Budget rumors

Marketing (the department where demo programs live) is typically the first place to get their budget cut when sales slump. A friendly reminder that not all marketing is evil. Free demo programs are pretty great for customers.

They raced 17-18 Cat 1 meshed in with Pro so they were effectively in the same race. I think they first started running them together at national champs in 2021 so results before that do seem a little unfair as conditions change. There was a big hullabaloo about Logan Bingelli (Pro winner) and Neko Mulally (Junior but fastest of the weekend) in 2011 and who would wear the stripes and I think the UCI for some reason said it should Neko. The next year they included the rule on the books but they still ran juniors separately at National Champs...

Wow, that's crazy. I thought the U.S. has been off the gold standard since Nixon in '71. Oh wait, I don't think we're supposed to get into politics here.