Eight mil’ higher in the bottom bracket but the same amount longer in wheelbase than a similarly sized large Demo and with a slightly longer front centre, those are the numbers many will be looking at ...

Final year juniors is a tough test for a young racer. While the Red Bull cameras may not be focussed on you, the team managers from Factory set-ups certainly are. The teenagers generally aren’t paid ...

A bike that stands near the very top of the all-time most successful race bikes. Only the likes of the inimitable Sunn team of the nineties stands above. Since 2006 when they signed Steve Peat, the ...

Gearboxes are a tricky one. On one hand they keep your gears safe and clean, while centralising the mass of the bike. On the other they are heavier than traditional drivetrains. In enduro, where every ...

Melon Optics started with the concept of custom spec goggles for the snowsports market at truly affordable prices. Co-founder and CEO James Pointer started doing seasons in France straight out of ...

Wonderfully low and colourful, and very much of the moment amongst the European all–mountain mindset, Commencal describe good enduro bikes as “not an XC bike that can descend but a downhill bike that ...

There’s something timeless about a clicked whip. It may not be as impressive as a flip or as fast as a scrub but it’s probably the coolest thing you can do on a mountain bike – and always will be. The ...

Unfortunately, if 26 ain’t dead then it’s certainly looking up a one-way ticket to Switzerland. There are now only a handful of new bikes still running the nearly obsolete standard and most are merely ...

Words by Steve Jones. Photos by Various. A full house rocked up at the Bellevue next to Les Gets town hall for Lapierre’s 2012 product presentation. Fortunately we’d had a night off the booze and were ...

There was a time not so very long ago when the jump from 140mm trail to 200mm downhill was simply too much. Riders were happy with bikes such as the Orange Five for their day-to-day riding before ...

Words and photo by Ed Haythornthwaite. That ‘chain stabilising’ switch engages a clutch mechanism which in one fell swoop puts an end to a load of the things which I hate about conventional gears.

What are the best downhill mountain bikes for freeride mountain biking? If you’re going to be freeriding you need one of the burliest bikes on the market, and a good bit of manoeuvrability as well. At ...