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Not a fan of the ID on that one. Makes me wanna get googly eye stickers and slap em on the piston bore surfaces. But now that I type that, I'm inclined to buy em just for that. Just hope they don't use the Venom oil they had with their first foray into mineral oil. That stuff was a beeeeach to clean off.

You want to feel sick to your stomach? USAC asks xc/cx/road juniors to give them access to their Training Peaks accounts so that some ai-obsessed vulture of a coach can identify riders for development programs based on training metrics.. because there are so few opportunities for young athletes to compete in the United States. “Performance Oriented” national governing body philosophy was pushed on us by the Walton family when they took over USAC. We used to operate on a “developmental” model that you know… prioritized local, regional and national racing experience. Now we are sending kids with decent w/kg straight...

At the risk.of a massive tangent it's not just the USA and it's not just cycling. Youth sport is in a mess almost everywhere.

Domi M4. Mineral oil all but confirmed?

Imagine looking through your gear bag and choosing white pants for a day like that. More importantly, it would be super interesting if the Specialized team riders were using steel stanchions, but I feel like there's no way that can be correct. Even if they didn't care about weight, they would either be a) enormously stiffer than alloy stanchions, in a bad way, or b) require paper thin stanchion walls, new top caps and hardware, and couldn't use any of the same internal seal sizes (although I don't know if the Ohlins DH38 uses any seals that interface with the...

Nathan Pontvianne looks to have gotten his hands on the same unreleased fork stanctions (steel?) that the Specialized team have been running for a while. You can see them better in the latest Vital RAW.

Whiteface is a large resort, and I’m pretty sure all the oils and waxes from winter sports every winter does a lot more damage then cutting 32 trees. I just can’t understand how a tree is worth 50k, just because it is on state land. Next you are in placid or the near area, look how many massive houses are being built, clearing at least an acre of land of trees just a house that will only be used for maybe 2 months out of the year, but I guess it’s on private property, so it doesn’t matter.

Charlie no

Fair point

That was originally part of it, yes. But now everyone who isn't physically fit or is simply lazy can have a similar experience without having to put in effort. Same reason why pickleball is growing so quickly and tennis courts are being replaced. Most people want the easier option

I can feel the downvotes coming, but I'm reminded of a comment I made back in February comparing e-bikes to GLP-1 drugs... Maybe I'm a purist, but isn't part of mountain biking the physical effort and reward? I understand capitalism, but when I see brands cutting analog models while e-bikes continue to dominate sales, it feels like another example of a broader trend: we're pouring investment into technologies that make difficult things easier. Is it possible that because analog bikes have essentially plateaued, so people who already have a sick bike are rounding out their quiver with an e-bike? Also...

Seems like a lot of e-bike talk in here lately, can you move this to the e-bike thread?

(Cross-post from the Bike Economics thread; if people don't think it's relevant to this thread, I'll delete it) My friend (- owner of a small chain of bike shops) just told me that, a couple of days ago, Trek informed their dealerships that there's going to be a lot of change in their product line-up in the near future. Apparenly Trek is discontinuing a bunch of models, including the Session, Slash, Remedy and Top Fuel. The way the announcement was worded makes it seem like there's no direct plans for updates or replacement models for any of them, they'll simply...

That Levo X is weird with that parts kit but put Deore level stuff on it and paint it camo and they'll sell an absolute shit ton of them.

luckily you can just buy the cheaper alloy levo 4 and then add the racks, saving you 7k each.

Why on earth would that specialized levo monstrosity only come in an sworks model... or even an sworks model at all? Why would the prospective buyer for this bike ever want factory level suspension, maven ultimate, XX transmission, with carbon wheels, bars etc? I envision the buyer for this being a commuter with too much money, a dentist that also does trail work or anyone with more ego/narcissism then common sense. Either way, none of the buyers I can project would want to shave 2-3lbs off of this bike and pay 4k more for it. The previous bike that was...

Spends 18,500 on a bike Oh, you want to come and collect it? That'll be another 90 please.

Wtf is this

I think it's pretty short sighted to judge a World Cup MTB event purely on whether it turns a profit over the race weekend. Very few major sporting events pay for themselves through ticket sales alone. The real value is the tourism, media exposure and long term positioning of the destination. In the case of the Whiteface event, the article notes that ORDA spent around US$860,000 while recovering less than US$300,000 directly through ticket sales and parking. It also notes that the event generated an estimated regional economic impact of around US$11 million in 2025. ORDA itself lost money, but...