Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 168 i Australian Mountain Bike

Riders: Jared Graves (above), Josh Carlson (right) and Chris Panozzo (main) Photographer: Sven Martin “The race is Chile was iconic, it was mountain biking’s own version of the famous Paris-Dakar rally. Up to twenty minute stage times with six stages over the two days, it was a marathon of a sprint with some hard pedalling in sections, but overall a genuine gravity fed race. Bodies were broken, and it seemed more than half of the field suffered some kind of mechanical issue. Nearly everyone left with a big smile on their face though, even those who had to sit and watch on after problems. This was one of the best EWS rounds to date.” - Chris Panozzo In Round One, Sam Hill and Cecile Ravanel won the Elite men’s and…

The first two rounds of the Enduro World Series were in quick succession in the arid dust and sticky mud of Chile and Colombia respectively. As much as both races were so different in the conditions they threw at riders – the results remained the same at the very top of the Pro classes. Sam Hill has continued to transfer his world-beating domination from downhill to the Enduro World Series, winning both rounds. In a similar fashion, Cecile Ravanel has won both rounds of the Pro women’s races. Round 3 in France will have been raced by the time you read this, and we’ll be interested to see if these two riders remain on top, especially with so many fast Frenchies breathing down Hill’s neck. The EWS continues to grow…

Here at AMB we think XC has always been cool – but it did go through a rough patch. But how and what we ride always progressing, we’re starting to see a shift in XC bikes. You might already notice that the majority of men in the World Cup are on full-suspension bikes, some with dropper posts. And dropper posts are almost the norm in the women’s World Cup XC racers – although hardtails still win out for some. Closer to home and the real world, away from the World Cup, plenty of riders have been fitting longer travel forks and dropper posts to XC rigs, to create a fast and capable trail bike. The latest models from Specialized and Cannondale feature slacker head angles for greater stability on steep…

KNOG PWR TRAIL LIGHT Knog’s Melbourne office churns out a myriad of aesthetically please products, from locks, to bells to commuting lights. Their new PWR range has a normal style light or a modular concept of light heads, batteries and power banks, like the PWR Trail shown here. The PWR trail can crank out 1000 lumens for 1 hour and still charge a phone to 75% from its power bank. There is a Mountain version coming with 1800 lumens and a broader beam. The light heads are interchangeable and there are bar and helmet mounts, plus an App to fine-tune your settings. Stay tuned for a review! RRP: $159.95 From: knog.com.au FUNN UPDOWN INTERNAL DROPPER Funn have already produced the Updown dropper post, but new for 2018 is the Updown…

Chances are someone in your group of friends and riding buddies has made the trip to Tasmania’s north-east and come home impressed with the quality of the trails, the beauty of the location and the amount of fun they had when they visited. I’ve been 5 times now, and that’s exactly how I’ve felt each time – with each visit it is clear how well the trails are settling into their surroundings. It’s not just the forest that is growing up around the edges of the trails – but the town of Derby itself. My first visit in February 2015 showed that the master plan of having mountain bike trails reviving a town wasn’t going to be trumped up. Derby was dying as a town. On my last visit, I…

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS The Vipa Trail is fresh to the Momsen range, a bigger brother to the XC/marathon thoroughbred Vipa Race which has been spotted at events like Cape to Cape in West Oz and the national cross-country series. On first glance it looks like a carbon copy of the tried and true XC model but on closer inspection you see that it is a totally fresh chassis complete with slacker and lower geometry for higher stability at speed. At the heart of the bike is the full carbon frame with all the regular trimmings like Boost spacing and internal cable routing. The paint job is unique and a little retro with the decals and South African contour map on the top tube. The grey, black and red colour scheme works…

While mid-week was scorching, and horror tales of inch deep dust and mid-berm bomb holes on Mt Stromlo fluttered across social media, a storm rolled across the nation’s capital on Friday afternoon. High winds, lashing rain and cold temperatures brought a sense of calm to the trails. Dust was down, grip was up. A repeat performance on Saturday meant that come race day on Sunday, the trails at Mt Stromlo were in the best condition for a long time. With one long lap marked out, race director Martin Wisata guaranteed that the course would provide the best bits of Mt Stromlo – all killer, no filler. WE’LL RACE AT DAWN Dawn would be a late start if you lined up for the 100 miler! With these hardy souls starting at…

With the success of the west’s Cape to Cape, and Port to Port in the Hunter Valley and Newcastle, there is now a third event to round out the popular stage race series in Australia. Reef to Reef is coming to Tropical North Queensland in August, and we’re itching to get onto the trails! Stage 1 is going to be a blast around Smithfield, the spiritual home of mountain biking in the tropics. Having hosted two World Championships, the trails have had just about every talented mountain biker carve a line in the red dirt with their tyres – why not add your name to the list? After 30km at Smithfield, Stage 2 has a location up the range at Davies Creek. The trails are often overlooked by riders who…

Sasha Smith puts the hammer down on the Old Ghost Road, West Coast, New Zealand. Photo: Odin Woods 2000 prototypes thrashed. 200 products conceived. 500,000 yards of fabric cut and stitched. FORTY editions of our catalogue produced. 800 races sponsored. $200,000 dispensed from our Slush Fund for local trails. A THOUSAND kilos of coffee beans ground, espressed and imbibed. MILLIONS of miles yet to ride. Pedal on Made by us in New Zealand. Only available directly from groundeffect.co.nz…

Well that was an exciting start to this year’s international racing! At the time of writing we are three races in and those three have certainly set the bar high for the rest of the season. Since the London Olympic XCO race there have only been a few XC races that have had me on the edge of my seat. That perfect mix of close and aggressive racing, drama and anticipation is hard to come by, especially when you have dominant figures in the sport. Kicking things off was the aptly named Epic World Cup in Stellenbosch, South Africa. To build interest and anticipation for the weekend, Redbull TV put on a pre-race show that was great to watch. Speaking to Nino Schurter and Maja Włoszczowska about current topics like…

Just because you're in snow doesn't mean you dress quite the same as other snow sports. You're still mountain biking, which is pretty physical and means you'll likely heat up – especially if you're doing an event like the Snow Bike Festival. What's this mean then? You need to think about what layers you're wearing. A base layer to wick sweat away, a mid layer for insulation and something wind or waterproof. That last one can be tricky as a few degrees difference can make a big difference in what you need. Minus 2 degrees is chilly but dry, however 1 degree is cold and wet – and needs a whole different approach. Here's a run down of the gear I used to stay comfortable, with advice from Ground Effect…

“Everything started in 1632, with the foundation of the United Wireworks in Biel,” explains Friso Lorscheider from DT Swiss as we sit down over coffee. “Biel speaks French and German. It’s the biggest city in Switzerland where both languages are working at the same time beside each other. That’s why all the companies, streets and even the newspaper is in two languages. On the left side it is German, on the right side it is French. And that’s true as well for DT. The German word for wireworks is drahtwerke. The French word is trefilerie. That’s why it’s DT, and Swiss because we’re in Switzerland.” So how come a 17th century wire manufacturer is now known for the highest quality wheels and wheel components? “When United Wireworks was founded it…

The new Stumpjumper range developed in response to an ambitious brief to create the ultimate trail bike – one that was a pleasure to use for a variety of riders in a whole range of conditions. While too much marketing talk can make even the most passionate riders groan, it’s important to appreciate some of the innovations incorporated in this sleekly designed frame. The new frame, with its asymmetrical sidearm, was engineered with the shock in mind from the very beginning. Research and development were pushed further by experimenting with “crazy geos to see what would happen if we took it too far,” said Specialized’s Mountain Bike Product Manager, Steve Saletnik. “It was cool because we learned a lot from that,” he added, sharing his passion for the job and…

Canyon has certainly gained attention in the last few years with their direct to consumer model, distinctly German design, road handle bars that resemble a biplane and signing two of Australia’s young downhill talent. As Germans are quite literal and to the point, we will get straight into the good stuff. The Spectral is Canyon’s take on what a trail bike should be, sitting under the Enduro race machine the Strive, the Spectral has 140mm of progressive travel on the rear balanced by a 150mm travel fork. The German brand claims that the Spectral brings “the right mixture of traction, control, handling and playfulness into a robust trail-tamer” and has been dubbed MBR’s 27.5 Trail Bike of the year. The trail bike category is one of the most saturated and…

Throwing your bike into the tray of a ute is sketchy at best, but with the simple addition of some padding over the tail gate, you can transport plenty of bikes securely. The Dakine pad differs to some others we have used, in that it has straps to secure your bike to the pad. The pad is obviously secured to the tailgate, so all in all it's more solid than just having bikes slung over the tailgate. Fitting is easy, with three straps to hold the Dakine Pickup Pad onto your tailgate. It's lined with some very soft material so the chance of damage and scratching to the paint of your car is minimal. Dakine do two models, one is a standard size which we tested, and it can take…

Sports nutrition advice can be complicated, confusing and time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. Get these ten things right and you’ll be on track to supporting your training and improving your performance. 1. Eat Enough…But not too much. Getting the balance right in terms of calories can be tricky, but is really important. Ever get back from a long ride and reward yourself with a huge pub lunch complete with beers? It’s common that we overestimate how much exercise we’ve done and therefore eat too much, resulting in weight gain, not weight loss as you would expect when you’re riding regularly. Instead, use the calorie function on your GPS unit or app (if you have one) to estimate how many calories you’ve burnt. This won’t always be 100…

They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and there certainly was a lot of heartache when The Hellfire Cup announced that they would become a biannual event. So you can imagine the joyous cheers that spread across social media and messaging apps when the event crew announced that the 4-day mountain bike party stage race would be back again in 2018, not 2019 as many had anticipated. So what’s involved? There are four days and seven stages of bike racing for teams of two, in a mix of shorter and longer formats. If you can’t do four days, there’s a two-day weekend option too. Got no mates? There’s a solo option. Trails are a real mix of old stuff, new stuff, raw stuff and tough stuff – all…

It’s hard work heading into winter. I know this is a big claim for many of us who live in Australia, as really…it’s quite temperate. But despite being fortunate to live in a climate that really doesn’t have much winter, the cooler mornings and reduced light can mean that it can still be a huge effort to get out and keep fit on the bike over these months. Someone once said; “there’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing”. To which I say poppycock! If it’s under 20 degrees that’s almost arctic and worthy of full-length arm and leg warmers, full fingers gloves, and perhaps even a balaclava. (Yep, we are pretty tough here in Queensland). In full seriousness; winter delivers shorter and cooler days, and for some…

At the start of this year, we held a competition with Fox Australia where lucky winners would get the chance to come out for a day on the trails. But it wouldn’t be any old ride day, the winners would get an updated suspension tune to their Fox-equipped suspension, some fresh Fox digital shock pumps to take home, a catered lunch (and dinner) with Bent Spoke Brewery, and the chance to ride and learn from 2015/2016 Gravity Enduro National Champion Chris Panozzo, and skills master Dylan Cooper from RideTechnics. Yeah, we think that makes for a pretty good day on the trails. With a crew of four riders keen to improve on their cornering, jumping and drops, our prize winners first had their suspension inspected. Fox had a team of…

COME UP, SLOW DOWN That’s the catch line for the Swiss resort village of Gstaad, and as I sat on the train that tunnelled upwards through the mountains from the shores of Lac Leman, I wondered if that’s what I would be doing. Gstaad is known around the world as an alpine playground of the rich and famous, where locals won’t bat an eye when a Hollywood starlet or New York City tycoon joins them on the slopes or at a restaurant. Having also visited in summer with a road bike and mountain bike, I know that the terrain and village lends itself to cycling. As it was, my train trip from Geneva airport was taking me to a bike race in the alpine village. And not a meandering sojourn…

We live in a land of vast stretches of desert, and ringed by amazing beaches. We have a whole lot of sand, and that’s where the majority of fat bikes sold in Australia get ridden. Of course, a fat bike also excels in the snow. The wide tyres (typically 4-5”) can be run at incredibly low pressures, and with the right gearing you can ride over really soft terrain. Like snow. Or a beach. When I decided to visit the Snow Bike Festival, I figured I would need to look at getting a fat bike. Of course, there are options to hire bikes in Gstaad, and just about any winter riding destination have a hire fleet. But first, I asked Australian Greg Saw, who has llived in Norway for over…

Speed could replace Felt’s namesake and still pay homage to their heritage and will probably be just as fitting. Jim Felt started off by tinkering with some of the world’s fastest motorcycles from brands such as Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha and Kawasaki. It seems fitting that his first foray into push bikes came through the development of a speed hungry triathlon bike. Fast forward a few years and keep the name and desire for speed and you have Felt’s line-up of today. Ranging from World Championship winning cyclocross bikes to road bikes and today’s test bike, the Edict. The pedigree of the Edict is hard to question having gained a bronze medal at the Cairns World Cross Country Championships in 2017 with Thomas Litscher. To tame that technical beast, the rider…

The MET Roam is the feature packed trail/enduro offering from the stylish Italian helmet manufacturer. With great coverage, a large visor and plenty of adjustability we were keen to get it out in the field. We had the MIPS model which only weighs scantly more than its simpler counterpart, size medium is only a 25gram gain which for the benefits is an easy choice. At $279 it sits comfortably within the upper offerings of the of the mid to high end helmet marketplace. On the topic of sizing, MET offer three shell sizes meaning the right fit can be achieved even with the highly adjustable dial retention system MET calls SAFE-T Orbital which is a 360 degree all-round belt that holds the head securely. Australia will have two colour options…

ESCAPIST SHELTER 3m x 3m – 440g One of our favourite pieces of equipment was the Escapist shelter. An ultralight 3m x 3m tarp weighing only 440g including 6 guy lines that shelters 2 people and gear with ease. In a pinch and pending how the tarp was erected, more people could take refuge under it. What we didn’t know before using it was how well it’s made and reinforced at the 8 tie out points with a rubberised waterproof fabric called Hypalon. All of which are designed for a ski/ trekking pole to locate neatly into it, we had trees but a stick cut to length would have been ideal. We set our Escapist Tarp up in an A frame configuration between two trees and used the Escapist bug…

THE LOW DOWN The Noosa region is fast becoming one of the go-to areas for mountain biking in the country with a temperate winter climate and loads of trail options. Tucked away in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, Garapine offers some of the best gravity fed riding in the region. Less than 2 hours from Brisbane and 40 minutes to the beaches this a great option for those who are looking for a weekend away on the trails. This is a must if putting together a trip to the Noosa area. The Garapine trail centre is used as part of the Queensland Enduro Series so that should give you a fairly good indication as to the intent of these trails. The centre consists of 6 runs, 2 blue and 4 red…

To be honest, this cake is actually better made into a loaf. But I like cake so I shaped it into a cake. This recipe came about from an abundance of zucchinis from Dad and Mum’s garden, inspiration from a Maggie Beer recipe and my obsession with encouraging every one (including myself) to eat more veggies on a daily basis. WHAT’S GREAT ABOUT THEM? Firstly, it is a great way to increase your vegetable intake. You can add any leftover veggies you have at the end of week. Increasing your vegetable intake is particularly important as we are coming into the winter months. Eating a range of vegetables will ensure you eat a variety of antioxidants and hit your vitamin and mineral intakes. Keep your immune system strong to maintain…