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I want to congratulate Vital and Lawlor on the best content to come out of round 1. I hope to see this continute with a rotating cast of riders at every round. By following the riders over the course of a weekend the story lines come to the front and you see the drama play out from the riders point of view. 👏🏼

I've mentioned this worrying trend in depth in a few podcasts over the course of last year. From last year they have hindered the ability of many top 50/60 riders to garner any points in qualifying. Pretty soon very few riders (even much less than now) will be able to rightfully enter a World Cup without being on one of the World Series top teams or federation entries. With the switch to the points now staying with the teams and not the riders this year there will even less power of advantage and bargaining for top riders. (Note if teams...

Agreed. Hats off to him for noting Dapréla “won’t take no for an answer.”

This has got to be the worst looking kit in existence. Who thought that accentuating Goldstone’s hips would look good? Got to be the exact same design as Tahnee’s been wearing

Appears to be some sort of belted purse.

TL;DR, Fox reported and things are going as planned. No big red flags. Stock is up 9% after hours ontop of an additional 5% intraday. Management was quick to point out inventories are stabilizing and the bike industry might be voyaging into calmer waters, which frankly surprised me. The tariff thing is an overhang, but it feels more like the overhang has to do with the potential we end up in a recession, consumer confidence/spending softens and nobody is buying stuff - they have their ops pretty buttoned up for this sort of thing (it appears). If anyone wants the...

Serious thanks to Vital MTB and SRAM for their outrageous prize package. Totally blew my mind. Really enjoyed the Fantasy competition and do hope that this continues for 2025. Thanks again.

Last minute mountain creek entry…

Lol I cant wait for the comments of wealthy 200lb beginners say the USD Fox is not stiff enough for their riding when there is a 200lb pro racer taking golds on the fork.

I think @TEAMROBOT had a similar answer to what I want to see - less products sold as "THE GREATEST THING EVER CREATED" regardless of who buys it, and more focus on setting up bikes properly or customising for the end user. Yes this would need some new concepts like "education", "training" and maybe even "repairability" but it would hopefully lower the cost of entry to decent bikes, but allow space for aftermarket companies to add on upgrades for the people that want it. A lot of riders want a bike that works well without excessive gimmicks, but its really...

Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of the bike industry, where you get worked to death and paid next to nothing, but there are literal piles of new and lightly used parts, even parts falling out the cracks of the building. What parts are you running? Whatever's in the pile. At least until you get laid off next week.

Some of you never rode when we had no clutches so the loose, flopping chain smashed against every part of your aluminum bike and the fork knocked in the 1 1/8th head tubes and then echoed through your monocoque frame and it shows. I can barely hear my current bike compared to the 3rd grade marching bands on wheels we used to ride pre-2012. I didn't even know you could hear what your tires were doing for the first 10 years I rode.

I originally posted a longer comment here but deleted it it read too much like a blog post, and I figured most folks wouldn't be into it. Still, I stand by the analysis, so if anyone’s curious (or wants to subject themselves to it), you can read it here: https://jeffbrines.com/2025/04/17/why-did-revel-maybe-go-bankrupt/ For context: $8M at 8% interest is $640K annually. That’s a serious cost (even if its a "spike" in the debt due to inventory or other reasons)—especially if you're carrying ~30 employees spread across continents. Even assuming $2K in gross profit per bike (which they likely weren’t making), you’d need...

If you listen to the most recent needles podcast w/Gwin he had no plans to race the first WC and only plans to race 7/10 this year

Hadn't encountered the phrase "RTFM" yet. Thank you for sharing this gift with me.

please don't respond about geo to this (or even respond at all), but just FYI, you can easily compare bikes and their geo in our product guide. here's a quick one i put together between a dreadnaught, firebird and sb165 - new bikes are being added all the time. https://www.vitalmtb.com/product/compare/64471,64876,50471?sizes%5B%5D=…

not much of a hardtail nerd but these are pretty neat

"tell me you started riding within the last 5 years without telling me you started riding within the last 5 years." all joking aside, yes its an older compound. while a good compound, definitely not used as much anymore, as maxxis has since released better offerings.