Pinkbike Poll: Not So Fast, Punc!
Man and machine, racing down the hill in a battle of nerve and skill. Or is it down to the fastest rider to repair their tires?
Mountain bikers love to compare weights of things, especially the rotating masses of wheels and tires. But, I don't think anything is slower than a puncture, and I have been trying to argue this point for years. If I was racing World Cup DH or the Enduro World Series this season, I could have beaten a number of paid pro riders, simply by riding my 60-pound freeride sled with solid rubber tires and making it to the end of the race.
This is a tale of two races: one at the British Downhill Series and one at the Enduro World Series - only two of a large number of early season races that happened across the globe. Both were plagued by punctures, and while they only represent a fraction of the bikes that were successfully piloted and pressurized at these races, how is it still possible that at these pinnacles of competition, such a simple failure could dump a racer's hopes and dreams, the years of preparation, and an untold sum of sponsorship and development dollars down the DNF drain?
British Downhill Series: Fort William
Ben Cathro and Gaetan Ruffin rolling down together with punctures at the end of the BDS race in Fort William.
 | Ben is a privateer, so every result counts. His latest instagram post announced that he was not nominated for a national jersey and wouldn't be eligible to race the Fort William World Cup... |
Ben Cathro and Gaetan Ruffin both flatted in their final runs. Ben is a privateer, so every result counts. His latest instagram post announced that he was not nominated for a national jersey and wouldn't be eligible to race the Fort William World Cup - an event he's raced 10 times in the last 12 years. God knows how much money Commencal spent on paying Gaetan, building new race bikes for 2017, building new 29" prototypes, flying to Fort William from France and getting all the equipment there–to simply go home with three letters: DNF.
Danny Hart punctured in seeding to finish 35th position at Fort Bill. He still took the win, but a bad qualifying run can warp some rider's minds for the finals.
Are 80 Punctures Enough?
I spoke to the race organizer, Si Paton, about the puncture situation and he had this to say: "Lewis Jones, our super marshal, helped over 80 riders fit new tubes at the Deer Gate/Schwalbe [around the mid-point of the track] repair station we installed. Fitted with tubes, pumps and tools!" Eighty riders! Consider that Fort William has been raced on for fifteen years (at least twice annually), so it's not as if the rocks jumped onto the track and surprised everybody. Have speeds increased substantially? Are racers taking risks to save rotating weight? Is lighter even faster downhill? Jack Reading stated he had one on the best results of his life at Fort William on a 46-pound Nicolai, with lead added to the frame!
For the environmentalist and the tight-fisted bugger inside of me, that's another 80 inner tubes, which were produced in Asia, shipped all the way to the deer gate on The Bill, used for half a run, and then likely removed to set up a tubeless system again in the pits. Or, €400. Could that cash have been better used as prize money for the juniors.
I spoke to the race organizer, Si Paton, about the puncture situation and he had this to say: "Lewis Jones, our super marshal, helped over 80 riders fit new tubes at the Deer Gate/Schwalbe [around the mid-point of the track] repair station we installed. Fitted with tubes, pumps and tools!" Eighty riders! Consider that Fort William has been raced on for fifteen years (at least twice annually), so it's not as if the rocks jumped onto the track and surprised everybody. Have speeds increased substantially? Are racers taking risks to save rotating weight? Is lighter even faster downhill? Jack Reading stated he had one on the best results of his life at Fort William on a 46-pound Nicolai, with lead added to the frame!
For the environmentalist and the tight-fisted bugger inside of me, that's another 80 inner tubes, which were produced in Asia, shipped all the way to the deer gate on The Bill, used for half a run, and then likely removed to set up a tubeless system again in the pits. Or, €400. Could that cash have been better used as prize money for the juniors.
| If it was purely down to weight, Jack Reading stated he had one on the best results of his life at Fort William on a 46-pound bike, with lead added to the frame! |
Enduro World Series: Madeira
Matthew Delorme's caption for this photo reads "Early leader Thomas Lapeyrie had the worst of luck on stage three when a puncture ruined his chances of a win or any top result in Madeira." Is it really down to luck, or do we all know that punctures are far too common in mountain bike racing? Thomas Lapeyrie. A fantastic, strong and skillful mountain biker. Not normally a podium contender, but a solid finisher on the EWS circuit. The Sunn team rider was having the race of his life in Madeira stating a first, then second place stage finishes, but punctured during Stage three, losing minutes. He clawed back some time, and finished a commendable 24th, but what could have been?
Prototype or proto-shite? Not only does a puncture kill race times at an EWS, but lost time can lead to wasted energy and can take a toll on the following stages. Transition times are tight and making up for the minutes lost fixing a puncture by powering up the hill to make the next start time can destroy energy reserves.
Jared Graves was using Cush Core inserts when he flatted, which probably helped him save his wheel, ride out the rest of stage, and eventually finish fourth overall. A bulky blasphemy to many; the inserts weigh around 250 grams each.
| I'm not looking forward to... I don't want to flat. |
I was surprised at the number of riders not choosing full DH casing tires on this video. Is it a case of run what ya' brung?, or a choice to try and save a few grams? Flying to Madeira for this race meant that some riders would have been guessing at the best option to fill limited baggage space before boarding the plane, with little chance of swapping out to heavier tires during the week.
The same stage that popped Lapeyrie's hopes also deflated Clementz's, Graves' and Richie Rude's tires - and they were the few that I found reported online. Four riders from the leading ten. How many of the 400 racers also punctured, we may never know. Madeira's beautiful waterways must have been flowing with toxic tubeless sealant.
#butwhy1
That's a question I have been asking for years. Poor Jesse Melamed. After stepping into the space left open by Lapeyrie, he finished day one in the lead. Absolutely fantastic for the promising Canadian. The EWS live feed suggested he punctured and/or destroyed a carbon wheel on Stage seven. After fading to 180th place, those three little letters reared their ugly heads: DNF. It must have been gutting, and that missed result may have ruined his chances for a top spot in the overall EWS points chase. Race season over. Move on to the next. How many shots do these guys have at glory? "Not enough" is the answer in their generally short-lived athletic careers. His saving grace could be that everybody else's bad luck could bump up a few places by the end of the season.
#butwhy2
Because tires that weigh 3000 grams but never flat are a tough sell for the marketing team?
That's a question I have been asking for years. Poor Jesse Melamed. After stepping into the space left open by Lapeyrie, he finished day one in the lead. Absolutely fantastic for the promising Canadian. The EWS live feed suggested he punctured and/or destroyed a carbon wheel on Stage seven. After fading to 180th place, those three little letters reared their ugly heads: DNF. It must have been gutting, and that missed result may have ruined his chances for a top spot in the overall EWS points chase. Race season over. Move on to the next. How many shots do these guys have at glory? "Not enough" is the answer in their generally short-lived athletic careers. His saving grace could be that everybody else's bad luck could bump up a few places by the end of the season.
#butwhy2
Because tires that weigh 3000 grams but never flat are a tough sell for the marketing team?
Riding on the previous leaders' misfortunes, Adrian Dailly moved up to second place and was raging until he too joined the puncture club.
Adrian Dailly explodes his rear tire
With Lapeyrie and Melamed out of the game, Adrian Dailly, the Tasmania EWS winner, stepped into second in Madeira and won four of the weekend's stages, but this puncture on stage seven ruined any chance of a repeat of his previous win.
Mark Scott was also reaping rewards from others' sorrows, sitting in fifth overall after stage six - equal to his best ever EWS result - until a puncture on stage seven dropped him to 13th overall. The EWS race at Madeira suggests that flat tires, not skill and athleticism largely determined the outcome, and the overall series will be a war of attrition.
Mark Scott was also reaping rewards from others' sorrows, sitting in fifth overall after stage six - equal to his best ever EWS result - until a puncture on stage seven dropped him to 13th overall. The EWS race at Madeira suggests that flat tires, not skill and athleticism largely determined the outcome, and the overall series will be a war of attrition.
Mark Scott, racing towards disappointment in Madeira
Putting Punctures into Perspective
Following Greg Callaghan's victory at the Madeira EWS race, founder Chris Ball banted on his facebook page: "Greg won in 49min 24sec, riding over 95km including liaisons with over 4700m descending." That race winning time is the equivalent of 17 race winning runs back-to-back at Lourdes Downhill World Cup this year and riding 45.2 times the distance, with no pit support. If the course is rough, it's not uncommon for World Cup downhillers to go through a wheel a run. At Lourdes, that's a wheel every 2 minutes and 54 seconds of racing. Therefore, if only a handful of racers suffer punctures or blow up wheels riding trail bikes racing down nine wild, un-groomed trails - well that's pretty astounding." But surely, a mountain bike should be able to ride down a mountain for the duration of one race without destroying a tire or a wheel.
Is the current equipment the best solution for the speeds of a pro rider? The pro's in mountain biking are generally using production parts and need to manage the risks? Is that the beauty of mountain bike racing, that it is something attainable for anybody who can stretch out a few thousand dollars of disposable income.
Is it time for the mountain bike industry to redesign wheels and tires and address the failings of the present standards, perhaps even complete bikes? Should manufacturers be looking at building race specific bikes that the consumers cannot have, but use their branding to create sales – you can't buy a Nascar or F1 car, but the sponsorships plastered over these machines generate sales and brand image.
Should racing regulations require an existing solution, like no-air mousse type tires to level the playing field? Maybe there should be a gentleman's agreement–like the downhill visor and skinsuit rule–which says "let's all run solid, heavy AF tires, be in the same weighty boat every weekend but actually finish some races and get some fair results."?
Is it fair game to allow racers to choose to use a heavier, flat-proof wheel and tire, or to trade the risk of a puncture for speed and perhaps, pay the price of failure? If all of the above were running solid 3kg tires and 1kg rims, would they have ended up with better results than they did? Or is it the racer's choice, is it more important to them to gain the best results at the risk of failure, or to play the consistency game? Race winner and series leader, Greg Callaghan, has only won 3/23 stages of the series so far.
What do you think?
I've always found it interesting in mountain biking that getting a puncture is just 'one of those things' or 'that's racing.' And manufacturer's seem to be taking note with the explosion of the tire insert market in the last few years: ProCore, DeanEasy, Cush Core, Huck Norris, Flat Tire Defender and more. Maybe somebody can finally solve this once and for all and we can all ride bikes more.
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Vittoria is using it in thier bike tires and you will start to see it in in car tires also.
www.techtimes.com/articles/160013/20160521/graphene-makes-thin-rubber-stronger-and-stretchier.htm
www.tyrepress.com/2016/10/sentury-electrostatic-graphene-tyre-breaks-through-performance-triangle
Spec Slaughter grid in rear w 34 psi I'm 225lbs and ride like a true Hack!!!
Last year I upped front and back about 4psi to these new numbers. Stiffer w less traction, but I find if I now ride faster and harder I get that performance back out of them. I ride Bootleg every weekend and all SW US bike parks all summer. I now almost never have tire/wheel issues anymore, but much like my suspension, at slow speeds it feels crappy/harsh!!
FYI- I huck and come up short a lot, tires still hold up!!!
Some tyre and rim combos fit worse than others, tolerance on actual sizing is pretty weak!
What a joke of prize money for the future of the sport. I know they love riding but damn that's no way to encourage the future generation to actually go race professionally.
More prize money for the kids!
What was the ladies prize money like??
Look at F1 which have unique tyres just for them, all the same for everyone on the grid and they still get a lot of flats.
The better riders/drivers learn how to manage tyres to win championships, part of the game.
- what's the bet I get a puncture this afternoon...
Without weighing in on the 29er debate, we've now got heavier rims and tyres AGAIN for a given level of pinchflat resistance. It's all good if it's faster - bring it on - but the industry is just picking the low hanging fruit (wheel sizes) to milk sales $$ without the technical development required to make it a minimal-compromise upgrade. Right now, to switch to 29 for DH means for equal rim strength and pinchflat resistance you'll either be adding a heap of weight to your bike, or making it way more prone to flatting, or reducing traction by running higher pressures to compensate.
I think more companies should focus on improving the reliability of the tyre/rim so that we don't have to keep making compromises in durability. Flats suck, racing or not. Messing around with tubeless, goo, tyre inserts, compressors, and all that junk saps the fun right out of riding.
If more companies put more effort into the interface with the ground, everyone would benefit - racers, punters, and people of all wheel sizes.
It's called Procores, but people just aren't willing to try it.
The price point seems like bad value at first, until you break it down and see what you actually get.
In my opinion, Procores have quietly been the single most important mtb innovative of the last decade. Contrary to initial scepticism, it's actually the best £130 you can spend on a mtb. What else can you get for that money that will improve your bike? A suspension tune; about 3 tyres; a titanium spring; or a new trinket or bits of transmission. None of those things make anything like as big a difference to your bike, how it rides, grips and doesn't bloody puncture - ever!
I ride in lava fields with sharp rocks everywhere and flats are common with every type of tire: 2.30-2.35 Maxis exo, purgatory/grid, Nobby nic/ snakeskin, all with punctures right through the tread surface, not sidewall. Punctures just as often with lower pressures as higher pressures-tried both extensively out of frustration. Eventually realized it was just all down to going faster & hitting the rocks harder. If you are riding fast enough you simply cannot visually track and finess every single rock in rugged trails. You will flat more often.
Speeds have definitely gone up. Bikes are longer slacker faster & tire technology has not kept up. More punctures this year in EWS & UCI DH than I have ever seen before. It is all speed related.
Only occasional puncture when I rode 100 mm travel epic with 70° head angle; far more punctures, several per month, now that I ride specialized stumpjumper FSR with 160 mm Pike fork and 66.5°, with much faster descending speed than on the cross country bike.
Out of interest how many flats do you get with your DH casings and inserts on your Enduro bike?
@robjames:
Instead of a 27.5 vs 29 test, how about a shaved thin race tire vs its burly brother. I doubt it would produce the mythical 5 second gap, especially over 100 trials with the added flats. Therefore, are the sponsors dictators? As Jill said, you have to make your speed in the us, but control it in Europe.
Choose your rubber accordingly.
We know the problem, we've known about this problem for decades, the justification and leverage is all there, the necessity for a solution is definitely there, but at the end of the day, how do you escape this issue? It simply doesn't seem like a problem that can be fixed without a radical solution...
I don't even know what I'm getting at with this comment, besides that no change is going to come until someone brilliant comes along down the road. It just seems like one of those variables that's ALWAYS going to plague the bicycle.....
In the meantime, I'll stick to my heavier casing tires and if I get a flat, f*ck it, Murphy's law, I'll live with it.
Pros ride fast on rowdy terrain (and most riders don't) which makes for more punctures. Pros are also always looking for that last bit of speed and precision, and sometimes they cut that margin too thin with tire choice and setup (low pressures etc). Expensive, team only tires aren't a good solution-that would feed the bike industry's over-reliance on a handful of well-heeled consumers at the cost of excluding almost everyone else.
On that note, a shout out to companies that make tires that have held up for me-Maxxis, WTB, and Vittoria, keep making burly tires with tread options. The tires ain't cheap, but I can ride them until the knobs are greasy little stumps.
In the corner of shame-Conti (old UST Trail Kings were my fave, but the new casings are frail and the beads go loose on an alarmingly regular basis) and Schwalbe (THE WORST-my g/f and I got pushed into buying them from the LBS, and have had cut or torn casings on something like 15 of those bastards, variety of casings). Seriously, do German MTB trails have no coarse granite and/or shale?!
I hear ya Dave!! Run heavy tyres, don't puncture, win all of the bitches.
The impacts that my bike, suspension and myself can take should not be limited by my tires or rims. I have destroyed 3 rims (Easton ARC 30 no more) last season on impacts that didn't register at all on my "oh shit" meter and that should not be the case. So I switched to Flow MK3 rims and Gomas with the burly casing. So far so good.
Weight is not the major factor to consider, at least from a point and ahead. This is quite important when your “weight savings” affect your safety (I’ve seen bikes damaged because the weight-phobic rider changed all the steel bolts with aluminum lightweight ones!).
As for the tires, I DO prefer the heavier, more reliable versions, which keep me away from the flats.
That’s all.
It's hard for me to complain about wishing I had some magic set of tires that don't exist
Do you buy high performance car tires or the car equivalent of a $15-20 Kenda Kommuter to get you to work and back?
I have $20 tires on my commuter and $80 tires on my race bike...Pro MTB tires are $80-120ea and Pro Road tubulars are $120-200ea...
F1 and Nascar racers go through multiple sets of tires in a single race...$350-650ea, and they have 4 wheels!
Yes, fewer flats at any pricepoint would be wonderful, but people (racer or not) pay for rolling speed, traction, and weight too.
Maybe you need to buy some ultra cheap 1200g heavy duty tires and solid tubes and see how that does for you on the trail.