All

Not a rumor but interesting: On the Downtime Podcast Dan Booker said he's on a 2-year contract w/ Santa Cruz that includes all the EDR rounds.

That bike is rad. Teeny L-beam seatstays and pocketed (but larger) chainstays. Looks practical to machine and keeps the chainstay stiffer than the seatstay for more roll and less wag. Good pedal stiffness but also good compliance. It will always be heavier than a tube for the same stiffness but (turns out) it's hard to machine a tube so this is a great solution and will be stiff enough for its weight. and it's cooler than a tube. It's neat that they can machine all these parts and still make money per bike... that's a lot of machine time. Funny...

norco's dh bike has a similar structure too (i know there's a better photo out there, but this was all i could find...look closely, you'll see it...seatstay sidecuts and chainstay bottom cuts)

Yeah not sure they got that right in the text. Clearly looks like its two separate halfs joined by the linkage and a "tube" kind of

This will not end well...

Atherton S.200 aluminum DH bike now for sale - https://www.athertonbikes.com/bike/s200-downhill.html - 3 builds £6,299, £5,650 and £4,165 (according to their website on this particular day) - 12 standard sizes and the combination of Atherton’s “perfect-fit" sizing - mixed wheel configuration - 200 mm travel front and rear. - DW4 suspension platform - single-piece CNC'd rear triangle S.200.1 build below

But can you stand on it?

Enough with the chainstay and transmission discussion - We have something else to scold Sram for. Some really clear pics from ESMTB of the electric dropper we discussed about a few pages back. I see why they did it, but it still looks terrible. But having the battery be a part of the collar, probably greatly decreases the stack height of the whole dropper, which is positive at least. https://esmtb.com/asi-es-la-canyon-lux-world-cup-cfr-de-jenny-rissveds-…

New Specialized DH prototype on the Pinkbikes homepage https://www.pinkbike.com/news/spotted-specialized-downhill-bike-with-tw…

I know I'm late to this party, but the difference between a 650b front wheel and a 29" front wheel is enormous in terms of stack height. The same head tube length will be 40 mm lower on a 650b front wheel and 650b specific fork. Especially in a world where manufacturers are already running teeny tiny head tubes (90mm!!) on some size small bikes to get that stack down for small riders, a 650b front wheel makes a big difference in getting small bike geometry and extra large bike geometry into the same ballpark of body position and handling.

They have so much space behind the seat tube to install all that hardware. Looks like a fun project.

Latest OTB podcast with Wyn . Still with GT and Dom Platt on the privateer programme. They also mention Ronan saying there is a rumour he's done something to his pelvis . Hopefully nothing major 🤞

Elite Seeding Result Redemption DH NZ Crankworx Summer Series Full seeding results

Mainly Hardline talk but a good conspiracy from Sven at 25:00

Little bit late to respond here but thanks for writing this up! I think its good for people to be somewhat informed on how stable these companies are - from the outside it can appear like a company is crushing it but behind the scenes is in chaos and that makes it even harder when they appear to fall out of the blue. The Fox stuff isn't surprising - there has been a big shift in spending on high end product so its reassuring that they seem to have pivoted to deal with that and I think its a good...

video interview with erice after her crash. it shows the crash at like 1:15 or so if you don't want to see it. erice is a beast! wishing her all the best in her recovery.

matt walker 17 questions (figure it's race talk worthy)

Reynolds with a new prototype

Its shit like Canfield getting upset that treks proto DH bike has bars of metal with a spring along with an idler mounted somewhere and an adjustable pivot point that makes me roll my eyes. I have countless hairball linkage drawings that look super similar to this that I have just drawn up and looked at how they would perform for fun... I didn't steal his "idea" I arrived at that shit the same way anyone else would... I used my brain. I understand how the industry works I just wish at times the industry could you know "be cooler"...

Without the lower guide the chain gets pretty slappy. He's been running this off and on for a bit. Benoit uses something similar, even with a lower guide.