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Why bother having more races in a world cup series if the worst (or a no show) race can dropped? Part of the skill of racing is managing bike and body over a series.

To have it make sense at the WC level there would need to be more races. However I do like the idea and have thought of it often myself. The reason I like it is that it would encourage athletes to take better care of themselves particularly with head injuries. There is a groundswell towards this but let's face it, if you sit out a round you will be out of the overall. Our midweek enduro series does this as well and it's great for amateur athletes who have other stuff going in their lives.

Man I was ready for some VDS race talk and instead I'm greeted with Vital's most notorious gangster starting a conspiracy theory where he's really super bummed that DH MTBing isn't like Supercross where we have Monster girls in every shot at all times lol So super duper weird when a race video is about racing and a male dominated sport has videos full of a 'buncha dudes' ugh so lame where are the eye candy bimbos to make the vid better... -_-

I would like to hear the other side of the story, I doubt the syndicate or santa cruz was trying to sabotage Greg and the truth is likely more complex than he made it look. I still think Santa Cruz was expecting Greg to retire after 23 (which he admits was true) so they didn't budget for him to be on the team in 24. When he changed his mind and wanted to race the 24 season, the budget was already spent elsewhere (Jackson's 6 year contract?).

Vid was dope! It bummed me out to hear (again) how things with SC/Syndicate & Greg fizzled out poorly at the end. It was sad to see the end of a Syndicate era that we all came to know and love for so many years. I wish they had interviewed individuals from the team who had fingers pointed at them as the cause of last year's issues. To hear both sides of the story. I find it hard to believe that someone as decorated and particular as Greg wasn't listened to and supported to the team's fullest abilities. I get...

rockshox stuff from our end article - https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/press-release/rockshox-announces-charger-…

This a massive win from them. If only the drive train side of SRAM approached upgrades/replacement parts with the same process as the suspension side. Also more damping! About time, still should be more

I’m a little suprised we haven’t seen any copy cat brake fairings from the other teams. in every interview I have heard I’ve never heard one bad thing about the specialized team other than the inherent self pressure of performing at the highest level. That includes grice, Finn, and Williams. They seem to pride themselves on collaborating towards their riders putting down their best race results possible. Don’t forget Finn raced the prototype bike before loic cause loic didn’t want to change mid season. And sure loic had a head start on the electronic stuff but he seems way more...

loic presses buttons as seen here finn in our race day audio discusses how stoked he is on the team dynamic with loic and jordan. have heard potential of 13 races based on a prelim calendar, but also presented as a "shoot for the moon and see what sticks" thing figuring committed venues will amount to about what we have now. if there were 13-15 races, how would teams afford to almost double their budgets? not saying it isn't possible, but is it worth it? rumors also that 2025 news drops this week/weekend. would be rad if that was true!

Is someone pulling your leg or are you pulling ours? Edit: Not a lot surprises me any more, but RS internals? That seems pretty out there, especially considering the general praise for Öhlins's forks. Which internals specifically, though?

The formula is pretty simple, as many have already said. It's points/dollar, and that's it. It isn't points per pick, because the picks are unlimited as long as you stay under the budget. Picking the assumed winner for juniors is always a bad pick. Pick Asa if you want to, but he's 80k and he can only get you 60 points. Same on the junior womens side. At least with elites, Loic and Vali will get you better than 1 point per $1000 if they win. You could theoretically have the bottom 15 men if they were all under $30,000...

I think you might be overthinking it a little, it is simply cost of rider vs payout. Bruni was 210k for 250 payout, Vali was 205k for 250 payout, hence why she was chosen in the best team.

Hopefully less complex means a smaller price tag. I’d happily go remote to not have to deal with internal routing. But at current prices I can just pay my lbs to deal with it for me and still come out way ahead. 😂

I came to the realization this morning watching FiveTen’s IG clips that Brett Tippie should be in the booth with his energy and love for the sport.

I want to meet whoever runs their cockpit like that last picture.

That's the kind of thing I'm working on slowly when I get free time (actually working on the code for reading load cells right now!). Currently thinking of something like towing a fixture behind my car on a dirt road that's just a wheel with a weight on it. A load cell to measure the drag force and probably speed & braking sensors too. Vary the speed, weight and tyre pressure and see how it goes! Maybe accelerometers to measure vibration losses too. Like with that DT rolling resistance test - low pressures roll fast because there isn't energy lost...

Don't know if y'all remember, but Spomer did a quasiscientific-ish lab test of rolling resistance with Maxxis tires, and found that the compound made the biggest difference, but wheel size and casing also impacted rolling speed. Tire test starts at 8:28 and for the love of all that's holy please don't try to explain all the ways this test isn't scientific. Trust me, we ALL know already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je1UyJRYhIg

I used to do advertising for one of the major automobile tire companies. Our most aggressive (softest) racing tread compound not only didn't work well when cold but we were told by the engineers that the tires had to be kept above a certain temperature when in storage because if they got too cold they would forever be altered and lose some of their grip.

yep, that's the stuff. We used to use straight MEK (Methyl Ethyl Ketone) and there was a science to it, leave it in too long you have no tyre left, also no fingerprints or brain cells.... that stuff was nasty. I'm embarrassingly into RC Crawling competitions, I've made my own concoction that works well and doesn't give you cancer.

Something i found was with Conti's you dont need to lean the bike as much when in use with 30mm ish rims. I found you need to alter how you ride them a little and once it clicks they are excellent Ive gone down that rabbit hole and tried some 25mm rims - they feel very weird the tyre would wiggle quite alot when not fully loaded.(that feeling of low pressure when not running low pressure)