Commencal/100% Race Team Disbands After 9 Years

Jan 12, 2023
by Ed Spratt  
Foot out flat out and on a lose and aggressive run Amaury Pierron took home his best WC result ever with a 2nd place.

The Commencal/100% race team has announced on social media that it is coming to an end ahead of the 2023 season.

Since 2014 the Commencal/100% has maintained a stacked lineup of riders and has kick-started the careers of some of today's biggest names with breakout performances over the years from the likes of Amaury Pierron and Reece Wilson.


bigquotesCOMMENCAL/100% is over

Thanks to the riders who contributed to this story and made it possible through the years under the different team namings. Thanks to the staff members, our dedicated sponsors and all the brands involved in the DH movement, photographers, videographers, all the fans.

Riders
Thomas Estaque, France: 9 years (2014—2022)
Amaury Pierron, France: 3 years (2015—2017)
Théotim Trabac, France: 2 years (2016—2017)
Reece Wilson, UK: 1 year (2018 )
Bruce Klein, USA: 2 years (2018—2019)
Antoine Rogge, France: 1 year (2019)
Hugo Frixtalon, France: 4 years (2019—2022)
Greg Williamson, UK: 3 years (2020—2022)
Mille Johnset, Norway: 1 year (2022)
Angel Suarez, Spain: 1 year (2022)—Commencal/100%

As the team comes to an end it means that the previous lineup of Mille Johnset, Angel Suarez, Greg Williamson, Hugo Frixtalon and Thomas Estaque will all be on the hunt for a fresh ride this year.

What a run for Amaury Pierron.

Reece Wilson coming in hotter than any Scotsman in Fort William history.

Reece Wilson became the first Scotsman to climb onto a World Cup podium and he did it with style in front of his family and friends.

photo

photo

On paper 9th place looks like a great result for Thomas Estaque which it is but his splits and rear mech tell a different story. He was running on pace for 3rd until the third split.

photo

Thomas Estaque was gutted to miss out on the first race after a big mistake in qualifying. He cleaned it up today and came down in 12th.

photo

Fifth for Mille Johnset who looked strong all weekend.


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74 Comments
  • 151 1
 So only 7 Commencal Teams for 2023 then...
  • 12 0
 Exactly, they are the largest presence in the paddock. They are scaling down not getting out of racing.
  • 45 3
 Commencal good and smart/ Specialized evil and greedy.
Lol.
  • 5 0
 My spider senses thinking this will just be a rename in 2023 of sorts. Same riders.
  • 3 0
 There's 99 now I think
  • 3 0
 Someone told me that the Commencal riders have to buy their own bikes at 20% off list price.
  • 2 0
 @jaame: it would an interesting cost and expense spreadsheet experiment to guesstimate the fully loaded privateer rider event participation expenses for maybe 2 EWS locations. I wonder what that budget estimate would look like?
  • 34 0
 Surprised no one's mentioned the increased team/rider registration fees this year....
  • 41 43
 no we have to yell inflation isn't real and corporate companies bad, you know, standard npc crap
  • 16 20
flag Bro-LanDog (Jan 12, 2023 at 6:41) (Below Threshold)
 @SnowshoeRider4Life: i love that people will downvote this and not provide an argument. The programming works
  • 12 4
 @SnowshoeRider4Life: THE PUTIN PRICE HIKE AND GREEDY COMPANIES ARE AT FAULT
OUR COOKED CPI NUMBERS SHOW A SLIGHTLY LOWER YoY INFLATION, INFLATION IS OVER!!!
STRONG ECONOMY
COMPANIES...DO THE RIGHT THING!!!
  • 5 0
 @Bro-LanDog: juice ain't worth the squeeze.

frix frix has one of the best tabes in the game and deserves a new team.
  • 4 0
 @SnowshoeRider4Life: *transitory lol
  • 12 0
 @SnowshoeRider4Life: Birds aren't real!
  • 14 3
 @Bro-LanDog: 1) The original comment was about increased fees and mentioned nothing about corporations. The response was a political hit about inflation. 2) Most on Pinkbike agree that corporations are bad and inflation isn't the cause of the bike industry as much as Covid artificially inflated bike purchases for 2 years. I work for a corporation and we are getting smoked by small independent companies that value customers. Corporations created inflation to prop up profits. Corporations shut down manufacturing plants to artificially increase prices. Also, Oil companies kept prices inflated until after midterms in the US so that the liberals would get squeezed out as corporations favor conservative run governments. If this isn't true, why did gas prices go down right after the US elections? It is all money related. Corporations don't see people, they see ebitda. Private companies see people. I have lived through it. There is no evil intent. It's just the complete extraction of emotions.
  • 9 7
 @mexicant: Sorry but corporations didn't "invent" inflation, its been around since ancient times the concept of inflation. Most of the inflation today is caused by government printing fiat money at rates never before seen in history! price inflation has been caused by all this new money in the market and demand spiking. If anything Government caused this inflation as a tax on the middle class. Read some econ books Speculators cause oils prices to spike and no its not because they only want conservative governments. Historically it doesn't matter who is in office prices of oil swings on speculation. I get the whole all big corps are evil trope but it isn't the boogeyman that most people want to believe it is.
  • 3 4
 @VicSandrin: you get it.
  • 2 6
flag mrmm8900 (Jan 12, 2023 at 13:07) (Below Threshold)
 @mexicant: >**REPEATING OBJECTIVELY FAKE AND INCOHERENT BIDEN BLABBER**

hmmm, what is an excessive increase in M2 money supply over the real(inflation adjusted) GDP... hmmm what will happen. I'm sure if something happens is thanks to greedy corps

fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=YG4X
  • 3 3
 @VicSandrin: Government doesn't print

Government doesn't print money at least not here in the USA. only the federal reserve can print money. and federal reserve is as federal as fedex is. It was given to the banks during the Great Depression in exchange for the banks to bail the country out which they artificially caused themselves to get their hands on the federal reserve. Then they sold off all the gold the money represented. and just printed money as needed, Thats what causes inflation. where there isn't any gold to back up the money. Hence the term the gold standard. There is no longer a gold standard. The inflation so to seek we seen the past few years was all artificially made up by the greed first from oil companies after the shutdown then other corporations riding the wave the oil companies created. When we have true inflation from printing money which causes the value of the dollar to go down and then you need more dollars to get back to the value you had before the dollar looses its value against other currencies. that has not happened. so no true inflation happened here. It was just greed. there is a reason wall street claimed the biggest profit margins in history these past two years. If the value of the dollar went down that wouldn't be the case.
  • 1 0
 @consularship: you from Pittsburgh by chance?
  • 1 0
 @Diesel2007: you truly believe the value of the dollar hasn't gone done? LOL
  • 16 0
 Dang, I really hope Millie can find a new team, it seemed like 100% was going to be a great place for her to level up her results
  • 11 0
 MIllie and Angel had both already announced at the end of last year that they were leaving the team, so I'm not sure why Ed makes it sound like they are suddenly without a plan.
  • 8 0
 Mille already has a new team, announcement is just around the corner according to her Instagram story
  • 3 0
 @i-like-toytles: It's the drama
  • 11 0
 Given their support of so many teams, I guess I am not surprised. Consolidating around their WC team and a solid stable of freeride athletes. Was never quite sure why they were headline sponsors on multiple WC teams, especially given the success of their factory team.
  • 13 3
 I guess the recession is hitting hard. Sad news !
  • 7 21
flag Tandaman (Jan 12, 2023 at 4:00) (Below Threshold)
 It's such crap, if companies would look just a bit further ahead in their "playbooks" they would see that they could ride out the wave of a recession without worrying about company "bonus" material. Sometimes making bold moves to cut "unnecessary costs" only bites you in the @$$ in the long run. Good luck to the riders looking for a new team support. They deserve it!
  • 20 7
 @Tandaman: I dont know… Im pretty deep into finance, and I will say, big companies are going to really need to cut back to survive this one out. Its going to be a very long, and rough ride for them. Unfortunately, for a majority of the world, things will begin to look worse than 2008.
  • 4 0
 @chillrider199: Worse than 2008? Yikes. No economy ‘soft landing’ for 2023 then. Gonna wait till 2024 to get that Yeti frame at 40% discount. Lol
  • 3 0
 @chillrider199: do you have “7 Moves to make right now”?
  • 2 0
 @Law-MTB: Id give it middle of this year haha. But yeah, no soft landing as promised.
  • 4 0
 @chillrider199: the era of free $ was quite the ride!
  • 3 0
 @samdeatley: "The banks hate him for this one simple trick"
  • 5 0
 Sad to see, hopefully the riders will find a good home for 2023 - although will likely knock on to others coming up.

@edspratt, thanks or the updates - things changing pretty fast at the moment. Genuine question (not trying to be a tool), will there be anything on the changes at Pinkbike Racing? It has been a few days since Jackson's post on Instagram, sure many are not on the platform. as a fan of the team curious to know if the team is shrinking, or time for someone else to get a shot, etc.
  • 6 1
 With all the changes that are going on it really seem like 2022 was the last year of legit good biking racing. At least racing as we knew it. The future doesn't look all that bright from my perspective. Hope I'm wrong.
  • 3 0
 I'm rolling the dice..........reserved my hotel room for Snowshoe 2023....
  • 6 0
 It’s almost like charging an exorbitant amount to register is out pricing the value companies get from WC DH racing. Who would have thought. . . Zero sarcasm, none.
  • 9 0
 "commencal/0% race team"
  • 3 0
 With the incresed cost of registering a team to a WC. It was predictable that there would be some who would just abandon ship... Sad for the riders. And probably not a good thing for the growth of our sport in the long run.
  • 2 0
 Commencal has been scaling back all over the place. You can only send it that hard for so long.

I am surprised that THIS is the team that they tore apart.

I'm wondering how much of it is related to 100% not wanting to contribute what they were... or increase enough to maintain....
  • 2 1
 Team Entry costs tripled for 2023, I can only imagine what other gross increases every other venue has stacked on top of that. Time for Loic and Finn to get the RIDER'S UNION vocal......time is ticking....tock tick tock....
  • 4 0
 Greg Williamson to Madison??
  • 3 0
 forgive my asking but, was it a 100% team on commy bikes or a commencal team in 100% clothes?
  • 17 0
 It was 100% a Commencal team.
  • 1 0
 @i-like-toytles: badum tsssssss
  • 2 0
 We knew this would happen with the new WC rules regarding team registration costs. Expect more Commencal teams to consolidate / disband.
  • 2 0
 top 30 only make qualifications and the final....don't need as many riders anymore.... It'll be interesting to see how many privateer riders throw in the towel, as there's little point in racing with negligible support or even prize money which DIDN'T increase along with the Entry Fees. Oh WC downhill, you're not looking so good right now.....
  • 2 0
 Hopefully the riders have known this for months now… doesn’t leave them much time (or space on other teams) now to get sorted for 2023.
  • 1 0
 oh it leaves them plenty time, from now to the first race is longer than most „normal“ off seasons…sad
  • 1 0
 @skintightleather: fair point… June, right? Still though some annual budgets are already closed etc etc.
  • 2 1
 @edspratt My understanding was that Angel and Millie had both announced they were departing from the team in December, but you seem to make it sound like they are suddenly without a plan for the year.
  • 1 0
 I'm gonna make a call and say Cannondale take Greg Williamson Might be massively wong but considering he has been on a training camp with some of the team it's my closest guess
  • 2 0
 Specialized cuts employees for real estate acquisition...maybe this team cuts the riders because it's just too expensive to prop up that many vowels.
  • 3 0
 Bike Armageddon Incoming! Same with automobiles and housing.
  • 1 0
 What the f*ck? Can´t believe that. Why? It is because of recession or because of UCI? Details please!

I hope riders are going to find new teams soon.
  • 2 0
 Maybe they're recouping money they've wasted designing an awesome bike that no one wants because it's got....you know...IHSR
  • 3 0
 If by IHSR you mean "Internal HeadSeat Routing", well, this bike doesn't have it...
  • 2 0
 @Voxran: was referring to the tempo. Most teams don't race to sell DH bikes...
  • 3 0
 It's now the Commencal / 0% team.
  • 1 0
 One of my favorite teams of the world cup! Hopefully all the current riders can/have found good teams to join for this season!
  • 1 2
 Now more than ever - if you need something and cannot afford to buy it cash - figure another thing out. It's hidden in plain sight everywhere - even on PB. If you can't it then either trim some fat or get a second job. This is real and it's coming fast - look at the deal this week between China and Saudi Arabia - they are going to crush the USA.
  • 2 3
 I don't know why we need factory race teams, factory test riders yes,factory race teams no. I'd rather they can the race team and charge me less for my new bike.theres still Gunna be racing only it'll be people passionate enough to make there own way in the sport.people like you and me!!
  • 4 1
 2014 was 9 years ago.
  • 2 0
 Slowly but sure
  • 1 0
 why, i thought they have earn enough money in last 3 years. too bad
  • 2 0
 De-commencal our riders.
  • 1 0
 my goodness there is some absolute spud comments on here.
  • 1 0
 Angel is the pick!‼️
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