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That’s pretty darn sharp.

This is a great question! UPCOMING ESSAY WARNING: I know I'm an outlier but, for me, getting a new bike is kinda the worst. For example, it takes me about 3-4 months to feel truly dialed on a new mountain bike. I can get any new bike feeling “rideable" pretty quickly, but I’m talking about getting the bike to fit like a glove to the point that riding it feels like second nature. "New bike day" requires tuning the bike's fit and suspension simultaneously, two parameters that affect each other. Not to mention that you’re pretty much guaranteed to need...

@Simcik since you brought up the marlboro thing, do you think there will ever be a time 5-10-20 years from now when we look at energy drinks like cigarettes? sure the money is huge for racers and events etc, but is the long-term cost (thinking about health of those who consume the product) worth it? i'm not trying to be holier than thou at all, but i've always found this topic interesting. can *controversial* sponsors buy their way in if the money is right? thinking that whole liv golf thing (which i don't know much about).

Chromag does a 50mm rise bar, would recomend.

So basically...our corporate masters don't need to pay us anything if we work for pennies to turn around and give all our disposable income right back to them in exchange for churros & half can of Monster Zero Calorie

I wanna know who the hell is downvoting Fugazi.

This deserves its own thread, but unless you are looking at the contract first hand, take everything with a grain of salt. I've negotiated on behalf of a handful of professional athletes in adjacent sports as an "agent" (LOL) and I've also watched people flat lie about what they were making to feel better about themselves. I get it. Its a topic riddled with insecurity. While I'd wager there are more athletes making $100-200K+ than most think (I'm including influencer types and freeriders in this), its a terrible career choice in every sense of the word "choice". If I was...

It’s curious how Greg (Norco, really) and Neko are saying completely different things. Neko spends two years developing a race bike and concludes you can’t adjust anything independently, every change will affect something else. And complexity breeds its own challenges with marginal performance improvement. Norco heads in the exact opposite direction, highly complex suspension with claims of independent adjustability. Making those changes in isolation would be so time consuming. To slacken the head angle and keep bb height the same you’ve have to switch out flip chips for both. Changing HA alters your front center, unless you move the BB...

Am I the only one who thinks waiting so long to announce this stuff has actually kind of taken the excitement out of it? I was pretty pumped after the new years but the excitement has kind of wore off now.

Jackson vs Amaury vs Bruni vs Finn vs the pack of wild dogs nipping at all their heals is going to be glorious in '24. Now only if there was a reasonable to actually watch it.

I think one of the biggest issues is most top end dh racers aren’t using publicists to reach a wider audience. Very few are like missy giove back in the day who would hustle a ton off the bike to build her brand.

Good question. Those that think it's worth it, will stay in the sport, but it's increasingly looking like many don't think so. However, as someone who watches a lot of different sports, MTB is pretty awful at promoting itself to the wider world; whether that is the teams, riders, or even the various series. And there is the problem of road cycling sucking up all the money, sponsors, and media coverage. It doesn't help when lots of MTB teams go into hibernation when the season finishes. Compare to the road scene; where there's always something on social media, etc throughout...

There's a thread talking about the financial woes of the industry: https://www.vitalmtb.com/forums/hub/will-more-companies-be-shutting-dow…

Huh. Weird. Something must have happened during the 2019 WC season for Brook.

"As for Mondraker, I wish that top tube was thicc'r on that bike. No matter what, hope Pinky and Dak crush it." I hope you mean the season, not the top tube!

It will be interesting to see how being owned by Pon affects One Up.

The bike world’s lust for 3d printing is hilarious to me.