Here is Gee Atherton's Session 9.9 29 - the winning bike from Red Bull Hardline 2018. Gee rides an XL Trek Session with 29" wheels and 190mm of travel front and rear, and the bike is specced with off the shelf components, although some parts have slight customisation to improve the feel for Gee's preferences. Gee runs 9 volume spacers in his fork and 26 psi in his rear tyre and 24 psi in the front. He does not run an insert unless the track is extremely rocky.
For this event, Gee's set-up remained the same except he dropped 5 psi from the rear shock, sped up the low speed rebound one click on the fork and wound the pedal pins on the Crank Brothers Mallet DH pedals out one turn, these adjustments were made only as the track became wet. Gee normally runs dry tyres for most conditions, however he opted for mud tyres in his race run.
57 Comments
One of the reason they don't look odd anymore is we got used to them…. but the other reason is that most brands increased the length/reach of their frame, stopped putting 29inch wheels on S size bikes and stopped the aberrant "this is a 29er so it must have a road/xc geo".
When evil presented the following at the end 2014, nobody said it looked ugly… if yeti or intense had released the SB100 or the sniper trail at the time, 29ers would not have been called ugly and odd looking.
Nice one Gee
#suckitbritishcyclingyouf*ckedup