We are in Fort William for the first round of the Downhill World Cup. Now that the long off-season is over, there's a lot of new bikes and technology coming out. Most notable are the tweaked rear ends of Martin Maes' non-electric bike, the Rockshox Foxxer, and Amaury Pierron's Commencal Supreme.
It's not Kashima, but it's pretty close. I don't necessarily understand the thinking behind the Gold Boxer specs. It doesn't seem to mean much, other than today's hype and maybe annoyance to Fox. A casual fan would think this is just his 40 points, and if anything, it would seem like a big win for Fox.
Cube has long had “almost ready” production bikes available. This should be pretty close by now, and it sure looks that way. If you ask Cube, surely they'll say the same thing he told me two years ago. The brake arm reduces anti-rise from approximately 100% to approximately 18%. Riders find that the suspension is so sensitive throughout its stroke that when braking hard into a turn, it can run out of travel for repeated hits. The way to avoid this is to lower the anti-rise.
The imitation game continues. Kenda is the latest company to adopt his Assegai style tires. The NS team was tight-lipped on details, but said it was still experimenting with the casing.
These thin chainstays are so thin that you might think they're flex pivots. However, there appears to be another way to adjust stiffness hidden behind the crank. Supreme already has one flex adjustment feature on their stay, so it's interesting that Commencal is looking to offer another option. I've heard of some people running their bikes without a bridge at all to achieve ultimate compliance, but clearly Amaury is trying to do more than just increase the amount of flex the bike has. You're looking more specifically at when and how you flex, and may even be trying to separate it further away from impact to stop any binding that could inhibit performance. The stay itself appears to be made of steel.
It's not Kashima, but it's pretty close. I don't necessarily understand the thinking behind the Gold Boxer specs. It doesn't seem to mean much, other than today's hype and maybe annoyance to Fox. A casual fan would think this is just his 40 points, and if anything, it would seem like a big win for Fox.
Cube has long had “almost ready” production bikes available. This should be pretty close by now, and it sure looks that way. If you ask Cube, surely they'll say the same thing he told me two years ago. The brake arm reduces anti-rise from approximately 100% to approximately 18%. Riders find that the suspension is so sensitive throughout its stroke that when braking hard into a turn, it can run out of travel for repeated hits. The way to avoid this is to lower the anti-rise.
The imitation game continues. Kenda is the latest company to adopt his Assegai style tires. The NS team was tight-lipped on details, but said it was still experimenting with the casing.
These thin chainstays are so thin that you might think they're flex pivots. However, there appears to be another way to adjust stiffness hidden behind the crank. Supreme already has one flex adjustment feature on their stay, so it's interesting that Commencal is looking to offer another option. I've heard of some people running their bikes without a bridge at all to achieve ultimate compliance, but clearly Amaury is trying to do more than just increase the amount of flex the bike has. You're looking more specifically at when and how you flex, and may even be trying to separate it further away from impact to stop any binding that could inhibit performance. The stay itself appears to be made of steel.
