NAVEL GAZE-ING
Holy hell, the last five minutes of the men’s MTB race at the Commonwealth Games was a pointed reminder that XCO racing can be very bloody exciting! While the women’s race lacked any real fireworks, the last lap showdown between Kiwi men Anton Cooper and Sam Gaze was sensational. You can watch the finish highlights here.
After getting a flat tyre in the final lap, Gaze’s chase down and out-sprinting of Cooper in the closing metres was insanely powerful – it’s easy to see why he’s the only rider to have beaten Nino Schurter since 1994 or something.
Gaze’s win, while clearly deserved, was somewhat overshadowed by his antics though. In the passion of the moment, he lost the plot, giving Anton Cooper the finger and chucking the Kiwi flag at his compatriot. Oh to be young and foolish… Mike Blewitt from AMB has a great wrap up here, and the incident even got airtime in the mainstream press. A very contrite Gaze took to social media to apologise: “Today I’ve let myself down, not by my ability to ride my bike. But my ability to uphold my values.”
WE THOUGHT THIS WAS AN APRIL FOOL’S JOKE
These things look just like an elastomer out of on old Rock Shox Judy. Formula’s have a new take on the token/volume spacer system that’s intriguing. Their new Neopos volume spacers are compressible, unlike traditional volume spacers. Their argument is that this removes the ‘excessive’ progressiveness of a normal volume spacer (we kind of thought that was the point…?) and they’ve got a million graphs to prove it.
INSIDE THE ASYLUM
Go grab yourself a massive can of energy drink and prepare for 17 minutes of freaking out. The Darkumentary is the story of The Darkfest series (originally Pure Darkness), the bleeding edge of truly extreme mountain biking. No one goes bigger, crashes harder or pushes further than this crew. It’s mountain biking, Scotty, but not as we know it, and it scares the sh#t out of us.
A HISTORY LESSON
Simmons, Tippie, Schley, Digger, Big Red Ted. Burn a joss stick and send your thanks to these mountain bike gods, for these are the deities who helped mountain biking move beyond the race track and changed the sport forever. The Moment is a new movie that documents this remarkable period in mountain bike history, through the prism of Bjorn Enga, the man who conceived the Kranked series (now out on VHS). Dirt have a great review of The Moment up now, and you can download it from iTunes here.
ATTN XC RACERS – SUSPENSION SETUP MATTERS!
Oh man, we wish we had a dollar for every XC race bike we’ve seen with the suspension pumped up to a billion PSI to make the bike more ‘efficient’! Suspension setup matters, a lot, even in the world of cross-country – if you’ve only got short travel, you want to make it work for you. Nino Schurter knows this better than anyone; take a look at how his mechanic will adapt his suspension setup for different races.
BLACK AND WHITE AND BEAUTIFUL
Our friends over at The Eskapee surely do appreciate the more beautiful and soulful things in mountain biking. They’ve assembled a gorgeous gallery of black and white mountain bike shots that you really should take a look at (you can buy prints of them too). Makes us want to get the weekend started right now.
