Spotted: Remi Thirion's New Giant Glory for the Lourdes DH World Cup 2022
The bonanza of new bikes keeps coming this weekend as Remi Thirion has been spotted on a new Giant Glory.
Thirion signed with the Giant Factory Off Road Team at the start of last year and was seen riding a couple of prototypes in the latter half of the 2021 season. That development cycle looks to be continuing into 2022 as we've spotted this latest version of the Giant downhill bike.
Interestingly, Giant hasn't jumped on the high pivot train with this new frame and the suspension design looks to be largely similar to previous Giant models. However, compared to the bike Remi was riding last year, it looks like the front triangle shape has been subtly tweaked in shape, for example with a curvier profile and a longer headtube junction.
There have also been changes made to the rear end with a reshaped drop out and a flip chip on the rocker, although we aren't sure if that wasn't already built into the previous prototypes.
Note the flip chip on the rocker.
A photo of the previous prototype can be seen in the third picture of the below Instagram slideshow:
While Remi's mechanics couldn't tell us any more information about the frame, we have reached out to Giant and they told us, "the team (GFORT) has been testing multiple generations of prototypes, over the past two seasons (this is the third) , with the goal of perfecting the next generation DH bike from Giant".
Giant teased the bike in a recent press release that seems to have flown under the radar.
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Funny how most companies innovate their DH bike first, but in Giant's case, it was the 2017 Trance that was the proof-of-concept.
It really does though, eh?
As long as it's a solid bike, the rider is happy, why change it all the time? If the bottom line is, that less expenses for questionable prototyping, trickles down to cheaper but good performing entry level bikes, everybody wins. They don't want to be on the forefront and riding the wave, that's fine. They have a race program and someone in one of these forums told that they support their racers decently.
Not interesting or surprising, in fact totally predictable.
In the year 2032, are you still gonna say it's interesting that Giant has stuck with it's outdated, low Pivot, DW link wannabe suspension design?
nothing beats massive single pivot bearings reliability and stiffness wise, everything else is basically mental masturbation.