All

This tread is hilarious I’ve taken the stuff that boys got pinged for and it’s not even that good, a hard dose of caffeine, taurine and beta give you way more of a kick and they are all legal Yes they are banned and yes he got caught. But he has served his time, which is in proportion to the crime. Stop making out like these guys are bad people who ran intentional, calculated doping programs to rip off other athletes, they made a mistake and will now move forward in their careers much wiser, as will the rest of...

Some of these comments are absolutely egregious. You've got an Olympian and a world champion having to defend themselves against the reliably uninformed vocal minority on the internet. These guys are explaining the situation to the best of their abilities, in an honest and straightforward way.

@tmano2 that's a pretty loaded and dangerous accusation to be throwing around about a professional athlete simply based on your feels and not one shred of factual evidence. There an interview with Jerome Clementz and a few others in VeloVert this past winter that posed the question of Richie passing Oton as you mentioned and not one racer thought it was a big deal... For one, no PED work that way. You don't get superhuman powers and at best it is small marginal gains. Even Jerome blew it off as Richie seeing his closest competitor in front of him and...

If Rude isn't back at the top end of the results when he returns it will make his previous wins even more debated. I'd assume he'd be clean as a whistle now so if all of a sudden he can't break top 20 everyone would go crazy. I'd prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt in this case. As much as I love a good witchhunt (I wish people were this bloodthirsty about corner-cutters and riders caught getting uplifts), if he did honestly accidentally ingest the stuff - well he's gone through enough punishment for sure. I think...

I would bet that most of us here would fail a WADA test just because of stuff found in most OTC medications... Factor in various supplements that are very loosely regulated and I'm surprised more people aren't getting popped....

A lot of you are worked up over some pretty minor stuff. This isn't some Lance type of situation, yet your emotions are comparable to that fiasco. Rude will continue to be at the top end of the results and this will prove not to be something that "taints" his past results. He's paid more than enough of a price professionally and mentally for a pretty minor mistake. Time to get over it and get back to seeing Rude smashing.

Weren’t the substances totally legal the previous year? Everyone in the field could have been taking it in 15 & 16 and wouldn’t matter. Likewise I bet there’s a lot of people taking what’s legal now but next year would be classed as a cheat. He’s no Lance Armstrong and the stuff he was taking wouldn’t turn him into the Hulk. Yes it was on the banned list but I don’t think doping can be classed as black and white.

Interesting idea but I’d be curious to know how it rides without center knobs. As I front tire it has to handle steering duties as well as cornering, and when weighted could end up riding on the side knobs since there is no tread down the middle. It’ll be interesting to hear to what degree this might affect steering response/control and rolling resistance. Good to see a design that dares try something new instead of mimicking what’s already out there.

i was so stoked to be a listener on this one!!! brandon did great and well, bender...he's freaking bender!

My next bike will have external brake cable routing. I'll take something that's easy to work on over neatness any day.

Love your episodes Spomer, but this has to go down as my favourite episode yet. What a total legend.

They are already dumbing down the tracks to make it more as a show for the public and TV. If on top of that we pay to watch, forget about DH as we used to know it. Now days is just crazy speeds and couple of switchbacks. Enduro is almost more fun to watch.

thanks for chiming in, aaron. it's crazy this whole ordeal turned into such chaos and wasted time. i woke up this morning to a billion texts and emails about all the drama. when the vid was posted yesterday, i didn't know it was a "leaked" video. i also chalked it up to "world cup riders are gnarly. they do gnarly things. they break stuff," and figured that the rest of the mtb community had the same reasonable way of thinking. i knew some people may comment on the crank break, but the newsworthiness of the video was that you hurt...

I shoulda been more descriptive and explained things better in that initial comment so that I'm not having to go back and clarify now. I answered a lot of these same accusations in the other responses I made on that same Instagram post but I'll give ya guys the goods too. I was just frustrated honestly. I had just got a message from the guys at Mountain creek who took the video respectfully telling me that they weren't going to send the video around, which was kind of them. One of the guys had sent it to someone else and...

Gwin mixing it up in the comments on Instagram. I really take issue with his criticism of Vital for reporting this. It might be enthusiast press and not traditional journalism, but if he thinks he can dictate what gets reported on he's on another planet. I wonder how many at Vital and other outlets knew it was their job to only post positive stories on Gwin? Probably want to get all photos vetted through his team before publishing as well. Heck, have his PR people write the copy from now on. popcorn.gif for watching this blow up

Exactly, the criticism of it being posted is childish and petty. Especially when it's the same outlet that has given so much favorable coverage to Gwin over the years, all the way back to the Yeti days. Its a cell phone video from a public race. It wasn't someone flying a drone over a wall and getting video from a secret test session.

Exactly. The professional response to this would have simply been "it's racing, these things happen". Throwing people under the bus and making excuses just looks bad.

I’m more upset he threw John Hall under the bus. The man is an absolute perfectionist, and there is no way a 3 year old defective part was used on a brand new build. We all know it was a squeaky clean brand new crank provided by ethirteen. Broken parts are a part of racing, call it that and move on. You can’t control the media Aaron. We are curious fans, and comments like that just further distance you from the people support your career.

30 years in this sport and I'm still reading the same BS as it was 1992. Pre-production,defected batch, prototype,my a$$!

Thought it was interesting he came down to "internet peasant land" (that's what I call it) to defend the product and ask Vital to pull the post. Part of me understands this. Part of me goes "cmon dude, that is overstepping a line you don't have control over". I understand he wants to be a good business partner for his sponsors. I understand he wants to put his best foot forward. But I'm not so sure I like him trying to pull strings to keep things hidden that really aren't that big of a deal. Reminds me of how he...