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The Orbea Rallon has been a pretty popular bike in the UK since 2016ish. I used to see loads of them in the Alps too.

wow , absolute wow , cant believe Orbea put that much into the scene.... wow.. not sure Hart / norco / greg will be good

Champery racetrack 2024 is a one line track, not the super technical and steep track of Hart's greatest run.

Kaos putting this on his story adds fuel to the fire

I think their finances might be taking a batter(y)ing.

Tried translating it a few times on various apps, seems like she is saying nothing is going right at the moment? Perhaps disappointed in canyon leaving many riders/teams

Tahnee commented some choice stuff in French on that post, I don’t really understand the translation though. Canyon must be going through something…

Bummer... He seems to be on the upswing right now.. Hopefully he gets something good..

I was pretty psyched to see a Norco last week on the north shore... of Oahu. I wonder if they are using some incentivized salaries to pay out more if individuals/the team get podiums etc...

There are a few factors: - Norco is owned by LTP, which is a distributor of other brands in Canada. Norco has long been financially floated by the relative profitability of LTP - At one time Norco had a solid XC team, a DH team, sponsored the Gehrigs for Enduro and had Jill Kintner and Bryn Atkinson, and a bunch of others at the same time not too long ago. They dropped everyone else. - They just split with their CEO with "no plans to replace him". The company was flying him in from California to BC every week as...

I think it was on a downtime podcast where Martin Maes kind of hinted that when he'd signed with Orbea they had promised him a downhill bike within a certain time frame that hadn't materialized . I don't doubt Orbea can make a good DH bike , all their other bikes get pretty good reviews so I don't see why this should be any different.

When was this canyon drop? was this pre sam pilgrim? who were their " influencers”? We know they are going to take a massive Hit from the Ebike battery drama and there was 2 posts on insta where people had lost garages from the fires, which were taken down shortly before the announcement. The Exploding seat stays on the torque and spectral ebikes seem to have caused issues aswell - as a heap of those posts are gone aswell. I'd happily see canyon as a brand take a big loss, They are part responsible for Headset routing when they worked...

Also, if parts really cause a competitive disadvantage... they get replaced with rebranded stuff that works. forks with internals from a competitor, sharpied maxxis tires, Intense M1s being repainted for like 5 different brands, these are all things that have happened when there was a real competitive disadvantage.

I think the Athertons are pretty satisfied with how the Robotbike/Atherton turned out. Gold and Silver at the Worlds, plus a few WC wins is not exactly shite….

Anybody call it here before me? I'm trying to figure out if I heard it somewhere else or if I just guessed correctly. p.s. I was SUPER wrong about the Jewetts so I'll take this correct guess as a consolation prize.

Also, someone must get to the bottom of where Norco is finding all this money in 2024 and 2025 with the bike market being in the dumpster. Greg, team manager and part-time racer has to still be commanding $200-250K+/yr. Then 6 factory-level riders. Granted the only 'big names' are Danny and Erice (Danny likely still came at a discount, maybe $175k). But still, having 6 full-time riders, Greg part-time. That's a ton of mechanics, travel expenses, etc. And their marketing budget is considerable, based on what they did last year with the videos and design. This fresh team announcement video...

Thomas Estaque officially in the Santa Cruz Goodman team.

I got the sense that Martin was kind of 'on loan' to help Frameworks spin up last year on the world cup circuit with the addition of Asa and Angel. I also got the sense that Martin was working for peanuts to make it happen and was going to get back to a factory team as soon as the budget opened up somewhere. He alluded to both those things on a podcast before last season started. He just posted that photo of him walking into Mondraker HQ. As someone pointed out, they may be starting an in-house XC team to...