All

Bye-bye Conor

Good point and I’m pretty sure he will be join by another RB athlete in the syndicate… Luca is off to a German company loving French Riviera and Colorado…

Sam Hill... Will probably troll us all again with an announcement saying that he's staying on Nukeproof.

Reach has been actually extended primarily for the cockpit space and overall better feeling of a bike, shorter stems which also increase maneuverability and longer wheelbase for stability. IIRC Moondraker was the first to push the concept, but they did not understand it fully so their early bikes still had ~73° STA with long reach and they were not really fun to pedal around, fantastic descenders for its time though. And there have been bikes on market with long reach and slack STA for years now (2018 giant reign comes to mind, but also many others who provided steep effective...

I think it has more to do with the steep seat tube angles modern trail bikes have and the required top tubes to make the rider comfortable sitting down and pedaling, which just results in a very long reach. As for DH bikes, nobody seriously sits on the seats of them, so the correct cockpit length isn't as important. So that's why the reaches are shorter. Maybe.

Part of the reason DH bikes have shorter reaches than trail bikes is because of the long front center due to the longer axle to crown and slack HA. The more stretched out you are the harder it is to go over the bars but the less leverage you have to create a front wheel lift and rotate around the rear axle. The longer the front center, the harder it is as well to get that front wheel up. Of course there's more to it when you think about levers as geometry is a whole package with the BB drop...

Wait, can get free drinks for team rumors

I've been out of the DH game for almost 10 years, as in not owning one. So I didn't realize they have shorter reach numbers than Enduro bikes. I love descending on my Enduro, so I just assumed DH bikes would have at least the same reach numbers if not longer.

Team rumors forum this year is a bigger disappointment than the anti-vaxers keeping this pandemic trucking right along. Come on Vital, make some burner accounts and spill the beans for us already....there's barely 2 weeks left on some of these contracts. This fire needs some fuel!!!!

Yeah, he announced that he was not having a suspension sponsor so he could run whatever he likes. So it's Intend by choice, not sponsorship.

For sure. Like I mentioned before, we can only judge them on what we know, and in their case, the best window we have is how they handle Rampage and the riders participating. And that picture doesn't paint them in a good light.

Team news from Nukeproof: ----------------------------------------------------- Welcome to the team: Louise Ferguson Nukeproof are stoked to welcome Louise Ferguson to the team. The timing seems perfect with Louise fresh off winning the second round of the Crankworx Summer Series Downhill on her new Nukeproof Dissent 297 (received just a day before the second stop of the Summer tour). Louise hails from Fort William, Scotland, now living in Queenstown, New Zealand for the past 2 years, she will be racing Crankworx series and various other races with Nukeproof. [i]“We’ve known or Louise for a while with her backflipping exploits on the...

Or you could read about it here on Vital https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/press-release/Mona-Mitterwallner-Joins-Cannondale-and-CFR,4895

All the talent scouts better be scoping out Evan's stellar heel drop.

Wall riding We Are One? Or a team with their parts? It would be a shame to have to ride OEM components 😅

Jackson Goldstone on Redbull source - https://www.instagram.com/p/CXKEkUSP3eY/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Difference is the majority of Danny's videos are on Red Bull's YouTube channels (as producers of those projects). He started his channel in recent years only and isn't super active. Fabio and Sam produce/run their own channels and post regular content hence the larger following and viewership numbers which is what brands care about... and yeah a 1.58M sub YouTube channel is worth waaaaaaaay more than a quiet top 20 WCDH racer. Probably more than a top 10 guy.

That's the model year, which is often a year ahead of the year it's actually released (your MY2022 34 SC was released in April of this year)

Have you literally copied and pasted this from pinkbike 🤣

Anymore tech rumours rather than Economics lessons…?