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I'm not sure there is the money in DH racing to bring in the anal and knowledgable talent into the scene to drive to push these things... When you have reputable bike brands having the frame development outsourced and only a few 'weirdos' pushing the envelope (does anybody else do data acquisition and development to the level of Jack racing? We lost Dave Garland and Fabien Barel I think pushed it a bit with Canyon, anyone else?), you can see how this hasn't been investigated fully yet. There are a ton of things that could be tested besides weight, I'm...

Welcome to Washington! I think you've got the right idea when it comes to amount of travel, but I would highly encourage you to not spend that much money if you're riding the green and blue lines at Duthie. I'm a former pro downhill racer and I would never spend that much on a bike, because I think the benefits are so small. The difference between SLX and XTR is almost nothing. Ditto for GX and XX1. Even Deore and NX bikes are totally rideable. You'll end up replacing a few things due to personal preference (taller/shorter bars, different tires...

After looking at this further, I think you may be right that this would be the Nude TR. This is an interesting situation, though, because Fox Originally released this in 2018 as patent 20180313423. They resubmitted this application without changing (as far as I can tell) any of the claims. BUT they did add paragraph 0067 in the 2020 patent, which supports some electronic modulation of the shock system. Lawyers will typically do this to protect an idea without distancing from the scope of the claims. So they may have some level of protection to say "we have this in...