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Your point about being a potential competitor to other frame manufacturers (when it comes to OEM wheel spec) isn't invalid, but I agree it's likely pretty far from their biggest reason for cutting off frames. I worked for a boutique bike brand (eventually as a product manager) when the Arrival 152 was in full swing launch/marketing - lots of guys there, including myself, ran WR1 wheels on their personal bikes. When the time came and we began looking at new carbon wheel spec options, WR1 should have been a prime candidate (if we ignored weight, which wasn't something the brand...

Saint Saint's Day

Team rumours rule 16.2E: An athlete using a bike during an offseason training ride shall not be strong indicator of sponsorship changes. If the bike is not from the category of the athlete's chosen discipline or if the athlete is travelling, it will not constitute a rumour. Team rumours rule 24.6B: The liking and following between brands on social media does not constitute a rumour.

New Saint day should be an intentional holiday, whenever that comes around.

More photos of Session

Confirmed now

You’re likely correct that the current slowdown has impacted R&D efforts. That said, as a former bike reviewer, I was already observing a noticeable plateau in performance as far back as 2020. While there are still gains to be made, those gains are increasingly incremental and require significantly higher capital expenditures to achieve. This makes them less attractive to management teams. It’s a classic example of the Pareto Principle in action—anyone who has tried to optimize something to near perfection knows that extracting the final 5% of performance is exponentially harder (and costlier) than achieving the initial 80%. Every industry...

A bit of shameless promotion, but hopefully it's relevant. I just put out a podcast episode where me and Alan Milway chat through all the 2025 team moves (confirmed and rumoured). Hopefully it's an interesting watch/listen. https://youtu.be/Mu0JAhGceB8 or https://www.downtimepodcast.com/team-moves-2025/ Clearly this forum gets a mention! Thanks to everyone here who keeps the rumour fire burning, I personally love it!

Vergier to Commencal officially official.

is the mechanic wearing a paper bag!?

Given the lack of non-cycling sponsors in MTB, how is this not the biggest story of the weekend?

Just a minor blip on the path to Crab bike dominance...

Bribes.

Athertons belt driven DH rig A.200.G

Don't think this has been posted? Lachie to Monster

I agree with everything you wrote besides, "Belt reduces pedal kick". I have chain on my gearbox right now as I get things configured, but I don't see how I belt would change engament. The pinion does have 18 degress of float + what your hub has. I only have about a handful of days on my setup, gonna be hard to go back to standard drivetrain for a DH or park bike.

As I said in the companies folding thread, Shimano's back to back cassette patent is the only viable solution. Interestingly there was an Italian company that preceded them too. Ratio wise, two 12spd cassettes with 1 tooth steps between sprockets (so 2 11-22 cassettes) give really really constant gear ratios. I can post some graphs in the afternoon, I've been throwing around some numbers. The problem even with a dual cassette gearbox will still be weight (two cassettes) even if efficiency won't be an issue. The main issue weight wise is always the casing as it needs to support the...

It's Gates-gate... priceless.