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I suspect the demographics of this forum are less susceptible to hype on average... But everyone can get caught up in the moment on occasion.

Kinda insane how quiet he went after Hardline. His clips are some of the most unhinged, epic clips of all freeride. It would be so goated if he just went radio silent the entire rehab and swooped back in with a banger edit. He's def entering 'ur fav rider's fav rider' territory. Just good to watch

Edgar Briole. Looks like he has vid coming out on Monday.

Interesting that Vali is not mentioning Les Orres. As was mentioned by many including myself there are some big conflicts of interest between Vali's personal sponsors and the Schwalbe Les Orres teams current sponsors. So given Vali's 2025 personal salary (If YT actually paid up haha) is probably more than the Les Orres teams 2025 budget, I can imagine that the team will align more with Vali for 2026 and Commencal will pick up the budget lost. From these press releases it really looks like Vali is being highered by Commencal, but riding for the Ravanel team. Interesting times, but...

The PB article links to the YT website which offers no info on the bike and continues to use the likeness of riders they fired / stop paying months ago. Classy.

Allow me to rewrite this headline: “YT Attempts to Rebuild After Bankruptcy With New Pricing and New Bankruptcy.”

I have so many thoughts about this press release from new YT.

Oh Spomer... those contracts were with the old YT company run by old YT CEO Markus. New YT company CEO Markus has no idea what you're talking about.

I only sub to 3-4 threads this is one of them yearly would be great like teams.

Cat 4 is we call this a gravity mtb but we will deny your warranty for riding it.

wouldn't ride/rep a brands bike that owes me money too.

My predictions for 26: 1. More bike shop closures. I think it's inevitable at this point. We're seeing a large number of shops closing on the powersports end. Dealers who've been in business for 50+ years too. If not closing they're getting gobbled up by larger chain ops.They're citing a number of factors and one of the bigger (if not biggest) is falling consumer confidence. I think decades of stagnant wages compared to inflation really hits hard at what was the middleclass. The opportunity is there for growth of service based retailers, but for large swaths that will be a...

Here's another 2 cents. I love Vital (and its forums) and I love Pinkbike (and its comments). I've followed both for as long as I can remember. I started mountain biking when I was 12 in the year 2000. I've been around. Both sites are great. Both offer different resources. Both serve the sport we love. But I don't understand why so many Vital readers hate Pinkbike. Like, really really dislike a site that has been so important in building a positive image for mountain biking. I've seen more anti-Pinkbike/anti-that-other-site/anti-rhymes with StinkBike comments on Vital than I can remember. Conversely...

Quick question @sspomer not that I want to delve into vitalmtb's business here... but is thread qty important to vitals business/website and a contributing factor to this? I think all of us would agree that this website/community is important to us... so if there are things that need to change or things we're doing that are impacting the site's success, we would want to play by a rule set that facilitates that. Otherwise, if there is a way to have annual, or monthly tech rumors threads and that cuts down on resource consumption, and still achieves the business goals/metrics for...

My grandfather was a bus driver and local side hustle handy man. His wife was the cafeteria lady at the local high school. Retired comfortably at 60 with vacation money. Owned a home kn their late 20s. Everyone of their 4 kids own a home. Was a city councilman for several years. My brother in law is a doctor. But 500k in student loans at 7ish percent means it will be a looooong time before he and my sister’s life actually feels upper class. Add to that the some 30 grand out of pocket they spent on ivf. Do student...

Most excited to see Briole back on the list. He's been pretty much radio silence since his crash at Tasmania last year.

As someone who just doesn’t have the time to scroll through the front page of the Hub for new and interesting posts/threads all the time, I can’t say I’m overly excited about this decision. I really liked having the most interesting topic all neatly packed up into one single thread, which I could follow and catch up with the discussion every once in a while. Won’t be as easy and convenient for me to follow under the new format.

I would love to see a deep dive on Orbea. I am fascinated by the basque style cooperative model and would like to hear your take on the advantages and disadvantages in comparison to a more traditional corporate structure.

If they make another one of those special edition frames with scribbles of internet comments I’m pretty sure yours has a good shot at prime top tube placement 😂

I don't think it correct to assume that "Supercar money" can not be made in the Bike Industry. You can make decent money in the bike industry, then reinvest that money in something that multiplies your wealth astronomically. We live in a crazy world, where you can make insane amount of money with speculation in no time, if you are smart and/or lucky. Now, that money may not directly come from the bike industry, but I would say he could have pulled off his wealth from smart investment of money that he originally made in the bike industry. I believe...