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Spectator friendly is irrelevant. Bicycle ballet is as spectator friendly as it gets - even more than BMX or slalom, and 3/4 of you are going to google it to see what it is. The Tour de France is as spectator unfriendly as it gets and thousands flock to it, in hopes of spending 7 seconds watching the racers whizz by. The tv programming is mind numbing as all the excitement in the 4+ hour “race” happens in the last 30-60 minutes. I recommend watching Milan Sanremo in its entirety and then ask yourself what Mtb is doing wrong, because...

No mention of what trimester it was in. He did say it was lighter but the weight number sounded unrealistic/impossible so not repeating it because I frankly do not believe it and didn't have build components list for context.

Being "over-tire'd" is a thing. I hate fixing a pinch flat on the trail as much as the next guy but I'm not gonna put DH tires with Cush Core on my daily driver. Speaking of tires, Maxxis and conti have yet to release a radial ya? I vaguely remember this forum mention it in the works once or twice. I'm not interested in running them myself, but I could go for some "new release" kool-aid.

Wouldn't this just be a slower, less exciting version of hard enduro racing?

I don’t think it’s really a flawed test methodology, but rather a lack of understanding how to interpret the results and over extrapolating. Testing a tire on a steel drum tells you how fast it rolls. It doesn’t tell you everything that happens when you put that in a much larger system. The main thing people forgot about was the giant meat damper sitting on top of those tires. Off road it’s much more difficult to test the impact of the meat damper because suddenly the relevance of the compliance of the tire is much more variable because the surface...

The average rider does care about efficiency, most just don't know how to articulate it. They talk about the bike feeling slow, or that they're working really hard on climbs, and making improvements to how efficient the bike is (mostly by going to faster rolling, lighter weight tires since most are on traditional drivetrains) makes a huge difference to their ride experience. Can't forget the average rider isn't smashing wheels and ripping off derailleurs all the time, and shouldn't build their bikes up like a lot of us do.

In the old, old, Tomac days the racers would do XC, DH and trials all on the same bike in one weekend.

So... In terms of triple headers, this has got to be the best venue on the UCI MTB circuit right? The downhill track is sick, the XC track nearly looked like an enduro track I saw dudes gapping rock gardens on 120/120 bikes... And the enduro looked gnarlier than the DH including a night stage (on maybe the hardest section). Not sure how many other triple headers there are, or even double headers for that matter... But wow this new venue seems to have done everything 'right'

Interesting how finn and Jordan have stepped up in brunis absence Incredible battles for the win every week. Evidently downhill is now no country for old men

They made minimal changes the track is just bedded in more compared to being a fresh track last year.

does this track really seem too "straight" or not raw? with all rider comments being "best track of the year!" and "finally a real track!" i take that to mean it's rough and rowdy, not some bikepark thing. is it because there are some berms to keep things moving?

I've started wondering whether the plaintiff's bar might be the most likely thing to save us from Surrons and perhaps even the Avinox wave.

But something has got to be done about the points system. Walking away from a World Cup having qualified and raced a finals in the top 30 over 100 plus racers deserves credit. Someone will lose an overall or a paycheck or a ride because of that. Teams will dump racers who put up results, got on TV, had their sponsors on screen the world over...and yet on a score sheet, it's as if they never existed.

I'm completely against flipping start order for any petty overall series interest. Times are so stupidly tight now that 30th can win. It's a FALSE stacking of riders in hopes of building a fictitious momentum. The courses get better sometimes for the last few racers. Sometimes it gets worse for the last few racers. Fractions of seconds spaced out over a 1, 2, 3 hour time span in variable weather & lighting conditions. All splitting hairs in the final. The days of dictating a countdown to fastest run are over. Please stop trying to manufacture a good time I'm capable...

1860s technology = a horse ? 🫣

Know of any carbon XC bikes that use a gearbox? For the downhill and adventure crowd, gearboxes may be a reasonable solution, but the current offerings are not great for those of us that like to pedal a lot. Maybe they'll get there eventually, but at the moment they would add about 3.5 lbs to my 22 lb bike, while costing me a bit on efficiency. I'll stick with the 1860's technology until something observably better comes along.

I still hold a soft place in my heart for the Lefty. From a purely engineering viewpoint, it makes more sense than having two legs, only one of which actually holds you up, and then ironically the rebound, which holds you down, is in the other leg. Plus the Lefty has the benefits of being inverted.

Cannondale isn't niche at all. If PON cans it that is a huge loss to cycling as a whole. Cannondale is one of the most storied (and interesting!) brands across road, DH & XC.

Found the free version: https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/ceo-trek-bicycle-…