Vital Rides the All-New Canyon Strive 29 10

Canyon's EWS-winning race platform gets a major overhaul for 2019, with bigger wheels and a revised ShapeShifter headlining the changes.

German direct-sales brand Canyon has enjoyed tremendous racing success over the past couple of years, with both their DH and enduro teams doing exceptionally well. In fact, the enduro team has finished the last two seasons at the very top of the EWS team rankings, and they’ve done so aboard the Strive. However, when it comes to racing, everybody knows you’re only as good as your last result, and what’s fresh today is old news tomorrow. With that in mind, Canyon set out to completely rethink their flagship enduro race platform, and the result is being unleashed on the world today. Canyon invited us out to Spain last week to ride the new bike – read on to find out what we thought of it.

2019 Canyon Strive Highlights

  • Full carbon frame
  • 29-inch wheels only
  • Two frame levels available: CF and CFR (CFR lighter by ~300 grams)
  • Shapeshifter technology: Geo and travel adjust on the fly (150mm or 135mm rear travel)
  • Internal cable routing
  • Integrated frame protection
  • Water bottle mount
  • Threaded BB (BSA)
  • “Flip & Turn” hidden rear axle lever
  • Boost front and rear
  • Weight: 14.05 kg/31 lbs (Strive CFR 9.0 Team, size M, without pedals, tubeless)
  • MSRP: 2999 € (CF 5.0) to 6999 € (CFR 9.0 LTD)
  • Availability: January/February 2019 (depending on model)

 

Canyon is pretty candid about who the Strive is for: racers and riders who like to go hard and fast. As such, when redesigning the Strive, they looked at how they could make the new bike as fast as possible but also fun to ride for those who get their thrills outside the tape. After much testing, they landed on 29-inch wheels as the optimal base to build from, citing the ability to carry speed but also the increased confidence the bigger hoops can bring as the main reasons. Note that Canyon doesn’t adhere to any particular “rules” or guidelines when it comes to picking a wheel size, rather they look at the bikes in each category as a whole and they try to build the best bike they can for each use case. That’s why there is no 27-inch option of this new Strive, for example, or why the new Spectral is 27-inch only.

The next big item on the list of things to work on for the new bike was the ShapeShifter. The ShapeShifter is Canyon’s take on providing an on-the-fly geometry adjustment feature, able to change shock travel, leverage ratio and key angles with just a simple lever on the handlebars. It achieves this by moving the shock pivot on the rocker arm via a piston-based system that can be locked in one of two positions, changing the leverage ratio and the rear wheel travel in the process. The previous generation of this system worked well enough, but it was a bit finicky to operate sometimes and it could be hard to know for sure if you had effectively managed to change modes (early versions also had some reliability issues but they were addressed with subsequent revisions). The new piston system (which was co-developed with FOX) is a different beast altogether, and although it achieves the same result it now operates in a different way when it comes to the user interface. In terms of the suspension system in general, the new bike gets a classic Horst-link layout just like the previous generation.

It’s big and burly enough to take on anything from long and rough enduro stages to runs in the bike park, yet it pedals well enough to be able to also tackle long days out in the saddle with lots of climbing.

We tested both a size L and XL at this launch, and this 1m84 / 6’0” tester ended preferring the XL for the fast and rough trails of Malaga. The geometry is aggressive without being over the top, and the big wheels were a welcome feature when it came to monster trucking the chunk (which is par for the course in this area). We can’t say that we were able to pinpoint the effects of the shorter fork offset (coupled with a short, 40mm stem), but the overall impression is of a very stable bike that is easy enough to stick into turns, once you adjust your timing a little bit.

So, who is the new Strive for? That’s a pretty easy question, because the answer is that there isn’t much the new Strive can’t do. It’s big and burly enough to take on anything from long and rough enduro stages to runs in the bike park, yet it pedals well enough to be able to also tackle long days out in the saddle with lots of climbing. The ShapeShifter is an interesting solution to the one-bike-quiver problem, especially when it comes to tackling less technical and steep trails that can otherwise become a bit boring on a big bike. The only caveat at this time is that there is no alloy version of the new Strive in the range (and no news on whether or when one might be coming). That means that the lowest price point to get into the new Strive club at the moment is 2999 EUR, which is still great value for a carbon bike but nevertheless narrows the market somewhat.

Build Kit

As previously indicated, we rode the second level down from the top of the range, the CFR 9.0 team. This bike is built around the CFR version of the frame, which saves approximately 300 grams over the regular CF version. For the rest, it’s all high-level parts as you would expect:

Our test bike featured a Lyrik with the old damper, and it also had just one token installed which left it fairly linear (we ended up adding a bit of air to compensate). The production bike gets the 2019 version with a Charger 2 damper which is an impressive fork to say the least. Supple and smooth off the top with good mid stroke support, it provides great small-bump sensitivity and tons of control on bigger hits. The Super Deluxe RCT out back is also one of our favorite rear shocks, and it proved up to the task at hand on the new Strive as well (even though it has its work cut out for it with “just” 150mm of rear wheel travel on tap).

SRAM’s Code RSC are among our favorite brakes, and with good reason. Tons of power and tons of modulation, they really are everything you could ask for in a brake built for big bikes.

Mavic supplies the wheels on the CFR 9.0 Team, the Deemax Pro paired up with Maxxis DHR2 tires. We like how the wheels performed on the trail, with quick engagement and snappy handling, but we did note quite a few punctures throughout the day (the very rocky ground and rough trails had their part to play in this for sure). The relatively narrow inner width of the rims may be partly to blame.

The SRAM Eagle X01 transmission worked well during this test, much as we are accustomed to. With a 32T chainring up front, we had all the range we needed to take on the challenges of the day, including a fairly grueling 25-minute climb up a steep fire road.

Canyon’s own G5 cockpit and Ergon grips and saddle round out the CFR 9.0 Team build. Contact points are always a personal thing, but we got along well with Canyon’s choices here.

Specs and Pricing

For more information on the new Strive, head on over to www.canyon.com.


About The Reviewer

Johan Hjord - Age: 45 // Years Riding MTB: 13 // Weight: 190-pounds (86kg) // Height: 6'0" (1.84m)

Johan loves bikes, which strangely doesn’t make him any better at riding them. After many years spent practicing falling off cliffs with his snowboard, he took up mountain biking in 2005. Ever since, he’s mostly been riding bikes with too much suspension travel to cover up his many flaws as a rider. His 190-pound body weight coupled with unique skill for poor line choice and clumsy landings make him an expert on durability - if parts survive Johan, they’re pretty much okay for anybody. Johan rides flat pedals with a riding style that he describes as "none" (when in actuality he rips!). Having found most trail features to be not to his liking, Johan uses much of his spare time building his own. Johan’s other accomplishments include surviving this far and helping keep the Vital Media Machine’s stoke dial firmly on 11.

Photos by Boris Beyer and Johan Hjord

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