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As one who had a 'career' in freeride and spent that career working to get into Rampage, I have a lot to say about Rampage, its evolution, and its current state. I will try to keep it short. The professionalization of Rampage over the last 25 years has made for a better event. Riders and builders are better paid. It has resulted in more coverage, more reward, and the ability to build a professional career around the event. Is it perfect? No. But it is pretty darn good. Is there room for improvement? Yes. Has it gotten safer for athletes...

Absolutely, and IoM TT shouldn't be any kind of benchmark for risk!

There’s a big gap between “no one can get hurt doing it” and “20% of the people who did it will need months of rehab”. If 20% of the fighters on a boxing card ended up in the hospital requiring surgeries, I don’t think you’d see a lot of them, even if fighters were up for it. If Silva wants to commit suicide via double backflip, that doesn’t mean Red Bull should televise it.

As someone who has followed and watched this since it's inception, watching live this year was too much. I turned it off after Adolf and hit the live button a while later to watch Emil almost plummet to the bottom. It hasn't sat well with me. I'm in my late 40s and have always been into action sports, including ski, snowboard, skating, etc. X Game in general. This one felt different. I think at this point, if there was another run of this type of thing next week, I'd wait for the replay or highlights. Add me into the too...

There have been many complaints about the announcing at World Cups this year (and last year). But nothing I've heard while watching the highlights packages of the WCs was as bad as the Rampage announcers screaming, "Cashie, bro!"

Not sure where you're getting that info, but it ain't correct.

Yes, if I had a dollar for every time someone said, "I can't wait until I can get a Radial version of (Insert tread pattern from a company other than Schwalbe)". Even the guys at Pinkbike, who really like Radials (product of the year), have said multiple times they can't wait until they can get their favorite tread patterns (from other companies) in Radial or Radial-esque casings.

Having given Radials 3 solid tries and not liked them, I'd like to point out that my number 1 issue with those tires is Schwalbe's knob patterns. The Albert is a really shitty front tire for me (sucks at loose and very rounded profile) and a fairly shitty rear tire for me (lousy braking down loose chutes). The Mary is a good loose tire for me but a compromised tire for hardpack, and a fucking boat anchor in the back. I think I still was feeling compromises on strictly the Radial aspect of the casing, but could probably find a...

Regarding Radial casing tires... TLDR version: 1. I highly recommend you do BOTH tires Radial and not try to start with just one Radial tire and one conventional tire. 2. Depending on the casing you're coming from, it will take a number of rides (5-10?) for your brain/body to fully get used to the Radial before you can take advantage of it/feel comfortable on it. Too many 1-ride reviews here and other places. More detailed version: -When I first tried Radial tires, I did front only, trail casing with a Conti DH casing rear tire. It was too unbalanced, and...

X01 Eagle is the bees knees. I ran the same chainring (gx aluminium), cassette (the old 10-50t),shifter and derailleur for 4 and a half seasons on my old bike with only a new X01 chain about every year. The derailleur is still being used on one of the bikes by a friend who bought it off of me. I ran the last chain for 2 seasons (and I started waxing the chain in the same time frame) and just recently gave it to another friend to use it some more as I only measured 0,35 % wear rate on it...

A narrower rear rim would work better for this application, but none-the-less you should try the tires I recommended. If you want even more speed and are willing to give up some front wheel traction, the Ibex Onza is way faster than it looks and when fresh has solid trail grip for a front tire (it falls off quickly though). The Onza up front (get the grippy but light version) with the CrossKing Protection in the rear (not the Taiwan made performance+, but the German made Black Chili Protection) is 98% as fast as XC tires while having 50% more...

Looks like Specialized is taking your advice of " be deliberate with how you are positioning a product in the market". https://www.specialized.com/us/en/vado-sl-2-ltd-s-racing/p/4293307?colo…

As a tall guys, I’m just here to chime in and say I’m about this. Bring it on. Ready for 32s

It's sad that as soon as SRAM purchased shockwiz they consigned it to abandonware. The tech was so cool and it certainly succeeded as a proof of concept, it's a shame the sole major update the platform ever got made it significantly worse for nerd users, which, let's be honest - that's who was actually going to buy the thing other than shops as a fun add-on to bike setup and demo programs. My one sentence review of the Shockwiz is "If the sticker on the back of your fork can get you 80% of the way to properly tuned...

Shockwiz can be a bit shit, but it can also be quite good. I'm very surprised that it doesn't receive frequent firmware updates to improve the calculations. The irony of the current Shockwiz is that only people who are already interested, and thus might already have somewhat well adjusted suspension will have taken the time and spent the money to use it. Those people might also have developed preferences for non-algorithmically-optimal suspension. Most riders, if they even know that there are knobs on their shocks, have terribly set up suspension and no interest in spending time adjusting it or learning...

begrudgingly, i've started a 32-inch wheel forum thread. not because i like the idea of them but because at crankworx, way too many people i talked to said they're not going away. https://www.vitalmtb.com/forums/hub/32-inch-wheels-and-mountain-bikes

Why this isn’t exploding in the gravel realm is beyond me. That’s where I see 32” wheels shining. We’ve got the shittiest, washboarded, rough dirt roads here in Colorado. My hardtail is much preferable for long dirt road meanders, I never use my gravel bike because the roads are so rough. Some 2” tires on 32” wheels sounds great for this application. Don’t see myself buying a new Mtb for the large wheels, and I was a 29 early adopter.