chocolate-thunder

@Murder-One: Remember when Thibault Daprela rode like that?

@marsh1901: Sorry, I didn’t see the “elite“ prerequisite. What Vali has done and is doing is amazing, similar to those juniors, as well as Rachel Atherton‘s historical dominance. But hey, that’s probably just because she rode with her brothers… (for those of you who are newer to the sport, that’s sarcasm) What I think is amazing is when the juniors beat the elites. Harder to compare apples to apples, but when possible, can be quite striking and powerful.

Jonty? And Aletha did it just 1 round later. And was significantly faster than Vali on essentially same track conditions.

@Maxwood38: All the massive profits from mfgs fleecing riders by maintaining/increasing COVID greedflation prices? Surely they have money to spare.

I saw these in the pits at WC this past weekend and just kept walking...

@betsie: It's a bit ironic that you fell victim to another big brand invading an established space with long-standing superior alternatives (Shoe Goo).

@Nopantsdougie: They do live. They disappeared after he was disqualified, which wasn’t an immediate decision.

Maybe my memory fails me, but I thought he was 4.x seconds up on Luke Wayman which would have had him competing with Max but not Asa.

He looked fast on track today.

@Dogl0rd: The problem with this logic is that they don’t do that - build the best for the least. The hard filter is price, so they get you more on being the lowest price as that’s easier to market than ‘value.’ They maintain profitability by cutting corners on functionality and durability and sell you on an image/lifestyle instead (see: YT ads). So you think you might have the best for the least, but what you end up with is crap that doesn’t look like crap on social media, and by the time you realize it’s crap, they’ve moved on to the next best thing, and their marketing teams convince you to give them another shot. Perhaps we are on the same page in wanting the best, but the product that performs well, is durable, and has CS that can help you when things do go wrong including having replacement parts isn’t going to be cheap. Don’t fool yourself - the best can’t be cheap. And this isn’t even factoring in innovation. If you want something special, that costs extra, unless you can wait a few years for the copycats to find away around patents and clever innovations to sell you a ripoff at a cut rate.