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But the Saints were and are better than the Codes, and they haven't changed since 2012

Excuse my French, but could we fucking please stop calling bikes "analog", "acoustic", or -the worst I've heard- "bio"? Bikes are bikes. Ebikes are something else. Now get off my fucking lawn you punks!

Hottake, The new Q1 and Q2 formats are great and I much prefer it over rider protected status as its probably the most fair way to narrow the field down. Does it mean some really popular riders lose out? Yep. Does it also mean that seasonal consistency is more rewarded in WC overall standing points? Also yes. Seems odd to have both protected riders AND riders trying to qualify all in one group. It's either we lock the field to the same 30 riders for each race or everyone needs to qualify for finals. No offense to riders like Danny...

I’m all for it. It sucks Luca didn’t make finals because I’m a big fan too, but this just shows how insane the talent level is right now and how brutally hard World Cup downhill has become. There are no easy finals anymore. The cream will still rise, though. By the end of the season Luca will end up somewhere in that top 5–10 overall range.

Luca crashed then flatted. Only way around that is protection. People didn’t want that though.

I've even heard rumors that Red Bull doesn't actually make helmets either

Angel gets a paycheck, gets to keep racing, and I would imagine helps with developing the next Aventon ebike. What's the problem?

Aventon is cool in my book. Sponsoring Tippie and Angel and making a quality, reasonably priced ebike. Sounds better than one more super posh boutique brand making a product that costs five figures.

Frameworks does riding/training on a different brands e-bike, and races on their own frame. Aventon is doing the inverse to Frameworks 😁

Timed training is your fastest run of the practice session so they could still be stopping and looking at sections

I would assume the wealthy elite that inhabit the venue as summer lodging want their precious exclusivity upheld. Didn't like the commoners showing up to give the local business owners (lodging, food, transport, supplies) a steady income. Want the peasants to stay peasants in the shoulder season so they can pay them minimum salaries when they come back to the chalet in the winter.

A fitting name as that sounds like they're just releasing the same bike over and over.

I’ve been enjoying the coverage of EDR that we’ve had for Loudenvielle. Elliot Heap is really good, especially at the rider interviews and the highlights are a decent mix of raw videos and head cams. Very enjoyable.

That's a hot take on things. A lot of us don't care if a bike is inside the box or outside it, we just want it to be a good time. Oh, and pretty much all mountain bikers are uncool. That's fine with me, I don't really like the cool people anyway.

Neither of those bikes are race-oriented. The bottlerocket is a freeride bike 27.5 front/rear. And the other is a Marin.

yes, the tape would have blocked the wind!!!111

The Murmur has a rising rate (anti-progressive) and riders much better than any of us ride it with this coil shock, which to my knowlege has no HBO nor a progressive coil. The Yeti Switch Infiinty bikes all had/have progression less than 20% and they ride amazing. I know Mr. Cascade thinks anything with less than WC level progression is unridable, but I actually like less progression on a short travel bike. Keep it firm so you have something to push against and preserve geometry.

"No China Crap" says the guy making an exclusive product for what is now a Taiwanese bike brand haha

You have to remember the true target market of this bike....if you really need that much extra resistance then a Tallboy is the wrong bike for you, full stop. The forum guys wanting to run a coil shock are a niche of a niche type of mountain biker so they aren't going to design the bike with that in mind. I also don't think its that far off, and they maybe chose to ship it with that shock spec so people can easily remove the spacers if that need to. And plenty of people have run coil shocks in bikes...