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This was great! Crazy fast turnaround, too. Thanks for your timely thoughts on the Downtime Podcast, Jeff. To your point about Markus being at the helm when he alleges that "PE was overly focused on growth," I agree. As I was listening to your 9-minute response, I was thinking about Andreas Kolb, who was likely signed to the 2025 YT MOB sometime around September of 2024, well after Markus came back as CEO in February of 2024. Kolb must have been a HUGE contract and represents YT choosing to double down on their DH and Enduro teams, especially given the...

Impressive. Very nice. Now let's see YTUSA's CEO tell-all podcast.

Chris, lots of people sacrifice and do hard work. Usually to make profits for someone or lot’s of someone else. Lots of us here make huge sacrifices cause we love mtb at financial loss. Both in how it affects our careers and the money we spend. And I’m not talking on gear, but rather the millions if not billions of dollars people spend a year after year creating trails, races, etc out of pocket with zero profit or even for free. You start every podcast asking listeners for money to keep it going. Which is completely fine. I have zero...

No shade on Downtime, but let’s see this for what it is… a friendly interview with someone who was paid (travel only as he disclosed) to do it.

I thought it was brilliant. Chris touched on all of the issues - team not getting paid, YT usa, paying customers with no bikes - and Flossman was free to respond naturally. Instead of diluting or improving my perception of tribulations at YT, I found the conversation really reinforced Flossman's now infamous character- zero accountability, empathy or remorse for the customers and staff involved, and constantly focused on the implications to the brand (not people) and damage limitation measures. If this was a parole hearing he'd be miles from getting his sentence commuted. I don't think this was good publicity...

I tried to make this clear in my follow-up audio note, but I’m really not trying to throw shade at @Downtime Podcast or Chris. Two things can be true: Chris is one of the best hosts in the MTB world, and the Markus episode missed the mark for some of us. No podcast hits a home run every time. Every show I listen to has episodes where I think, “not for me” or “this one whiffed.” That’s normal. And the same is obviously true for my own content. In a way, Chris let Markus make his own bed. Anyone who...

And then, in the passive voice, "someone built a house of cards and it blew over"

this is the first downtime podcast I am passing.. dont want to listen to an egomaniac, and waste my time.. I have enough in my corporate work.. thanks for the fantastic listening with Spomer and Jeff, thats all I need to listen to.. The follow up from Jeff was cool as well !!!

dude never left the company! he just stepped aside in the public eye and stayed on as „chief visionary officer (oh boy!)… he is even listed as CEO on all of YT’s financial reports. PE might be responsible for to optimistic growth targets, but i‘m pretty sure weren‘t the ones spending the money on full blinged out mills (still don‘t get that term). i have an opinion of who has a spending habit in that equation

Flossman has all the classic traits of a narcissist. If you've ever worked with folks like this in any capacity... oof. He built of house of cards based on his charisma and it blew over. Expected.

Markus coming across as that POS who is bashing his wife and says something like "look at what you made me do, you made me do this" kind of vibes everyone else's fault but his.

TLDR... he should have thought twice about taking that sweet sweet PE money (and the corresponding growth targets that came with it) and when he came back as CEO in early 2024, he should have made some hard choices sooner. And he sold some cars. Jeff and the gang nailed a lot of this. Hope you guys do a follow up pod!

My current fox38 is way better than my Girvin flexstem so I'm pretty content......

Moir's end-of-season update

I'm not sure what's difficult to understand. If you watch the videos and footage leading up to the race, the vibe is so much different that a WC dh race. Everyone is doing the track walk together and sessioning features together and towing each other into stuff rather than doing things based on "teams". There is much more camaraderie. Obviously, there are riders whose goal is to win, but there are other riders whose goal is to clear the track. Personally, I don't think having someone like Matt Jones coming in last, but flipping the last jump takes away from...

Jack Moir confirms he’s off YY and still looking for a new team.

YT Yuge Theft

The new Loam Gen 2 from PNW that we just reviewed uses a 26mm stanchion for the 30.9/31.6, and a 29mm stanchion for the 34.9.