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Damn I hope thats not true. Giant is such a boring brand and team.

I hope this came across better in the original German. Can anyone confirm their team truck got repossessed?

Is it me or does the special paint jobs and jerseys make it really hard to tell who's who. Vital Raw is awesome though!

Cool that sram are making a big effort for their athletes but personally I think all the 50/50 colour schemes look terrible. Wasn’t working for Pivot last year, isn’t working for the syndicate or norco this year. Frameworks knocked it out the park with the American chopper video 😂

dear americans: please stop thinking you are the middle of the world, especially with THAT government. why in hell do you think it makes sense to own a race truck in america with so little races!?

I'd hardly say the hardline thing was the nail in the coffin. If anything that was more so 'cringe' and just tasty troll bait for poking fun at him, for both fans and fellow riders alike. And it would be easy enough for him to roll with the punches. The nail in the coffin for me came a while ago, and I'm still blown away how it all worked out and is overlooked by this point 🤦‍♂️

Out of interest did you see Adam Brayton's track walk vid at the Wales event? At one point he mentioned a line where there was a gentleman's agreement the previous year, which he said BK then broke. 🤷‍♂️

I think his comments about hardline TAS being unfair really were the nail in the coffin for a lot of people

I'm sure Marc is vastly more intelligent than myself, but he's also a malignant narcissist whose vision of the of the future is terrifying if you dig into it. He doesn't explicitly state it in his manifesto, but he's clearly all in on accelerationism and the Neo-Reactionary (NRX) movement AKA the "Dark Enlightenment". Tech billionaires are attempting to trying to destroy America and rebuild what they are calling "Network States", which are essentially corporate fiefdoms. This is part of the reason why they are trying to sell off public lands. They need land (and farm land) to accomplish this. https://thenetworkstate.com/...

I don't know anything about the prosperity of his business, i meant more his popularity seems to be on the decline.

I think you have over thought it and the bk sport thing. I'm pretty sure it was just a merch opportunity off the back of his YouTube channel success and popularity. From the conversations going on in other threads on this site and others it seems like that may be on the decline so I doubt he could count on that. I know for one I wouldn't walk about with a t-shirt with his name on it.

All suspension designs will become Crab and all tech rumor conversations will become Long Chainstay

Brook has been through a lot with the recovery from his crash but it's hard to not see the sense of entitlement that he has. It was either in a Downtime or Ride Companion podcast where he was talking about how bad the Mondraker dh bike is (while still being sponsored by them), but he also said that he thinks that he will be a lifetime Redbull sponsored athlete just because he's been with them for 10 years. I'm sorry, but if Redbull can drop Daren Berrecloth, Andreu Lacondeguy, Kyle Strait (& others) to make room for new talent, then...

He's undeniably a far better rider than I’ll ever be, and this isn’t a critique of his skill on the bike—that speaks for itself. That said, I have to disagree with what you’re saying. He’s consistently criticized almost every bike he’s ridden since the original Mondraker. More notably, he’s the only rider I’ve heard go on a podcast and openly tear into multiple former sponsors' equipment—sometimes even gear that’s still on the market. Most riders might, years later, say something like “that wasn’t the best race bike,” but he goes as far as to call bikes sketchy or unsafe. That...

I think we all know the downfall of Intense is when they went to Kenda tires, any brand to takes sponsorship money to race on concrete tubes is doomed. Jokes aside, that was a very curious choice and really started the downfall of the racing program, not sure how it factors into sales, but I'm sure it doesn't help.

Weird considering all the quality content he has provided since being with them.

Except for Tech Talk itself which always descends into Chainstay length discussion

The VitalForum Law: Given sufficient length all threads descend into tech talk...regardless of the orignal purpose of the thread.

Because it's a production model that normal riders will be considering, and even if they aren't riding Hardline, big guys taking bad lines can come shockingly close to Hardline in terms of bike abuse. And because it's already out there any way. If you somehow completely avoid anyone finding out, it makes sense. Like in team training with no one around. But at highly publicized events like Crankworkx or Hardline you may as well own up to it. Also that's another thing. It's Hardline. Why is it so bad to just own up to it? It is, comparatively, one of...

Just to clarify. They Streisand'd the whole scenario. It's not like BK has the best reputation regardless (gestures vaguely at recent events) but he asked for the clip to be removed from MoiMoi's youtube video and generally tried to hide the event within the media and sweep it under the rug. Plus it came after his devastating live crash at Crankworx. Plus it had the added context of people going 'well its just a proto with an unfortunate proto flaw' for the first one, and then that happened. He got perfect storm'd... By some factors outside of his control and...