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B Practice from Worlds is live! Show Notes 3:06 - Dak's wild week at Worlds 4:56 - Race day game plan 7:52 - Where it all went wrong 15:08 - Dealing with the heartbreak of crashing at Worlds 23:29 - Bike setup for Andorra 23:48 - Loudenveille setup and approach 26:22 - Tire choice in Andorra 27:31 - Dak's "stock" tire pressure 30:39 - Unintentional Maxxis sponsor plug - DH casing convo 33:47 - Tuned mass damper hearsay 42:36 - New (Shimano) brakes 46:27 - Dak's current bar height, stem length, stack height 57:06 - Industry Buzz Report: John's thoughts...

So as was sort of pointed out a bit earlier in this thread... Dak's interview confirms that the High Roller 3 (at least DH version) is on the new un-announced Maxxis casing that they've been developing for a while. I'm sure partially or wholly in response to Continental. Neko mentioned that Maxxis was working on casings for a while but they weren't going to be ready for the 2024 season so they went to Continental for the higher performance envelope of their tires. I'm assuming Maxxis is tooling up to get the DHR2 and Assegai ready to ship with this...

If product life cycle length influenced pricing Shimano Saint would be free by now. 😆

Yeah right! That said Hope actually did this. They calculated an amortized cost for the carbon bike including development time etc but then after a while they realized they had learnt so much from the project that could be applied to other carbon products and help to spread the sunk costs. So they dropped the price by £1000 (iirc) and gave a rebate to all the original customers! This is very Hope-like. In the Uk there was/is a salary sacrifice scheme you can use for buying a bike and save 25-30%. Hope signed up but it was a lot of...

Some more detailed photos of the Commencal V5 steel chainstay on Myriam's bike during a bike check video. She says, "It can change the flexibility.. It's super interesting, I can't say more about it, but thats a good thing." There is also a removable stiffening plate, I assume they can change the thickness and shape of this to adjust flex. I also noticed the lower link is much longer than stock. Not sure if they are trying to change the leverage ratio or give the bike a more reward axle path or both?!

Haro's France IG page just released a pic of an upcoming carbon version of the Daley, 150/140 rig, she clean: And they have some pics of a very tidy enduro rig as well, not sure what got in the water at Haro but I'm here for it.

I don't want to REALLY derail this thread...but about 15 years ago I worked as an engineering consultant and ultimately spun off a small company to develop vibration based energy harvesters that were essentially tuned mass dampers. The damping was electromechanical, and tuned both with hardware and software. Our secret sauce and patent material was a mechanical means to decouple the frequency of the harvester from the input source...it could be very efficient with a wide range of input excitation frequencies. They never made much power, though...you could take a measurement or send a low power signal, but charging a...

Unless someone else sinks a lot of money into FMD like Canyon did (they were pretty shoestring in the Transition days) then they might struggle to attract top talent. Atherton seem big but they are mostly self funded and I don't see them selling the volume of bikes to support a big roster. The initial money came from outside investment and the bike park is not a big money spinner (Gee is doing a multi date speaking tour at the moment to pay the bills). If Bernard is stepping down soon then Pivot need to look towards a replacement and...

#2 on Specialized Gravity seems bigger than #1 anywhere else…

Guys: - Loris to commencal - Finn stays in Specialized - Coulanges to Norco - FMD racing to YT

My guesses on this: Benoit - definitely moving, since Dorval is folding. Consistent podium threat, so a good buy for a team chopping & shopping. One possibility would be Canyon - they had a deal with Thibaut before that blew up last year, so we know they're interested in a top DH rider and had budget. Either that or MucOff Commencal, who seem to have unlimited budget. Loris - he'd be my other bet as someone Canyon would have been talking to, or else the obvious Max Commencal hookup. So between Benoit & Loris, they could both go either way...

looks like AG will finally back in the stargate on a worldcup level…

He went quite swiftly straight to Max after the race if you saw that.

Prize for round 2 was just delivered! Thanks Vital 🤩

Something on AP upper fork. Could be another version of a mass damper? I also noticed his rocker link has a flip chip at the top shock mount. He’s back on the steel chainstay as well, which is switched from all the photos early this week. Lots going on with this machine!

Some CNC hotness on Cam’s bike

This is fun, Asa wore Neko's snapped-chain World Champs socks for his run:

Maybe rebranded Pütoline HPX R but it seems to be the new OEM shimano oil as this picture in the pit bit part 2 seems to indicate

Couldn't help but notice they're using a different oil for Shimano brakes, i'm wondering if that's something already in the market and will be stock on the new lineup or if it's a new Shimano recipe