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Get it. The air spring is fine and so is the damper. I have no desire to replace either and I am coming off a $$$ Avalanche damper in a new 2023 36 chassis. I may tinker with the damper for the sake of adding moar shimz eventually, but the Essential just rides great in the factory configuration out of the box. And on top, you get some plush German TP as a bonus!

Sleeper Shredit from La Thuile 🤘

Oh heck yeah it was. Rain on goggles. Dusty shaded wood is a nightmare. Spectators scrabbling up/down the mountain stirring more dust than the riders would powder glaze the lightest sprinkle on goggle lens & blind instantly. As Troy SLIPS in the left/right that Bruni doubles... Rick - "Well, we're hearing some technical issues with our cameras up on the mountain caused by this weather" Carlson - "Yeah, you can see how much wetter it is up there already!" Rick - "I am hearing we're going to be suspending racing after Troy's run. Massive technical problems on the hill. Loads...

gentle reminder that MTB design is often based around a medium/ML size, jackson is like the perfect size for it. He stands very upright and this is hard to replicate for taller riders, to be in correct ratio for riders over 6ft etc the bike would be so long it would be useless everywhere except for straight lines. including a much longer fork and a very tall frame.(this tall and long theory Brian keeps jerking off about is great for a DH bike, But for anything else. forget it.) For Normal people riding normal trails, we need to be looking...

medium with long chainstays:

Totally agree. Having a proper database with rider stats like height, weight, etc. would be super interesting, just like they do in the road cycling scene.

Dammit reading that review of the Intend doesn't help curb the want for one. Would love to buy the stripped down Essential and drop iny Ohlins 36 air cart and TTX18 damper. Best of both worlds.

I think Jackson is on a medium these days. Seems that would be the right size not a size up for him? Would love so see someone create a database comparison with riders height and bike dimensions.

So it looks like the night stage turned out pretty cool, I could see one of the urban DH races be a night thing at some point.

“Night stage” looks to have better lighting than most daytime tracks

Hasn’t it been shown several times that Dak’s bar height is actually quite normal (even lower) compared to the other bikes in the WC? It’s just that the Mondraker starts off with a very low stack height. I’m sure it was here or PB where they actually went around and measured them and it was average.

bike product that doesn’t make sense? That’s usually a bottle opener

Dak 1.7s off finals 😞

Given what he's recovering from and that track, that's really impressive...

Megavalanche is this weekend. https://www.ucc-sportevent.com/en/megavalanche-alpe-dhuez-en/ Here is the start list for the final. https://timingzone.com/magavalanche-alpe-dhuez-2025/#1_16A21B Kilian Bron is usually a top contender and had a crash in qualifying so starting in the 4th row. That should make for some wild helmet cam action of lots of passing. Macky of the youtube pair Sid n Macky is in the 7th row. Last year he came from row 8 to 8th place overall so will be interesting to see how he does this year being a row further up and from watching a recent video I think he has targeted his season on...