Spotted: A Dual Crown Orbea at the Lourdes DH World Cup 2022
While Orbea does not produce a DH bike of its own, we have spotted something potentially new at the Lourdes World Cup.
Previously Martin Maes had told us that he would be racing the DH World Cup, but we did not know what bike he would use. Now at the first round of the World Cup we have a better look at the Spanish brand's bike for Martin Maes.
A Rallon in enduro guise
We don't have any information on what exactly this bike will be, it does appear that it could just be the brand's Rallon enduro bike with a dual crown fork (it's worth noting that the production version of the Rallon is not approved for use with a dual crown fork).
While this could be the start of something new from Orbea, riding an enduro bike with dual crown forks is definitely nothing new for Maes. To make his GT Force ready for the rigours of a downhill race Maes swapped out the standard 170mm fork for a 190mm Fox 40 with the standard 160mm of rear travel remaining the same.
Martin Maes' Force enduro bike with a dual crown fork from Maribor last year.
We previously asked Martin about racing DH on the GT Force, and he said, "It was not the best idea to be honest! I gave it a go because my enduro bike had a newer geometry than the downhill bike. However after a couple of training runs, I soon realised that the stiffness of the frame wasn't adapted to the need of DH racing. It was rough & tough especially with the blown out conditions that we had."
It sounds like adapting an enduro bike to race a World Cup level downhill wasn't exactly what he wanted, so it will be interesting to see how he finds the Orbea this weekend.
Following us spotting the bike at Lourdes, Orbea sent us this:
 | Martin Maes is passionate about DH. Although his primary focus, as part of the Orbea Enduro Team, is the Enduro World Series, Martin has always enjoyed competing in DH races when he can, pushing himself to the limits and helping to improve his performance for the Enduro World Series. And that’s exactly what happened this weekend. Maes participated in the Lourdes DH World Cup on a modified Orbea Rallon with a special name printed on the bike: OOLab. OOLab is the part of Orbea’s research department which exists outside the standard product development cycle, meaning it’s not necessarily tied to a specific product. This is our “blue sky” project where we can test ideas, build knowledge and develop out-of-the-box solutions for the future. OO stands for Orbea Optimization, and the infinity symbol perfectly reflects the limitless nature of the research and the constant search for improvements. Although this is a new project, innovation and research have always existed as an essential part of Orbea. Although we debuted the OOLab project through Maes’ Rallon in Lourdes, the Orbea Optimization Lab expands to all models and categories. OOLab exists to allow Orbea to experiment and test new ideas outside the product development cycle, giving us more freedom to test ideas in order to continue generating knowledge. In this way, OOLab encourages creativity and offers a pathway to develop innovative, new ideas that could be applicable across our product ranges. OOLab also allows Orbea to share our passion for innovation with the public by freeing some of our research from ties to a specific product and thus the strict need for secrecy. This is exactly what transpired with the modified Rallon we saw in Lourdes. This is not a project to develop a DH bike, nor to build a team in this category. Rather, it’s an effort that advances our knowledge, which we’ll apply to our next ranges. In this case, our learnings from developing this model will potentially be used in future MTB designs. |
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Martin Maes : "This is just my Rallon with a Fox 40. It sucks and I fully expect it to disintegrate the moment I point it at a WC rock garden. FML."
Race bikes are race bikes, no matter the category, fully optimized for the task at hand, whether it be XC enduro or DH.
I do still love to see enduro bikes with DC forks, something about it screams early 2000 freeride to me.
New Spire on the way, and I’d love to have a DC fork to bolt on for bike park days…
The gap is getting more blurred for sure.
Or is it iTrack now?
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