Sea Otter is here for another year of breaking new tech trends in mountian biking and, increasingly, gravel racing. With Avinox dominating headlines with its crazy-powerful motor last week, this weekend appears to be all about seeing who has new big wheel bikes and components hiding in their booth.
Whether you’re excited or apprehensive, the big wheel future is looming and looking unavoidable. Godspeed, all.
Finn Iles x Brembo
Before we wade into the weird world of big wheels, Finn Iles’s Specialized Factory Racing S-Works DH was showing in the combined Brembo and Ohlins booth. Brembo? Yes, Brembo. The Italian motorsport brand is officially expanding into mountain bikes. The bright red levers and calipers have featured prominently on Iles’ and Loic Bruni’s bikes for a little while. Now the GR-Pro brakes are going public. And in more colours than red. But the red and yellow Ohlins / Brembo combo does look pretty fast. As does the less-prototype-y version of Iles’s DH race bike. Can’t wait to see that in action in a couple weeks in South Korea!
Fox x Ari 32″ full suspension prototype
After a year or so of mostly smaller brands and boutique builds, and just a single tread of 32″ Aspen’s from Maxxis, the dam looks like it’s about to break. The big players are here. Fox partnered with Ari to show off its RAD prototype 32″ fork. It’s a full suspension bike that really doesn’t look that weird, at least in that size. Sitting on it and rolling around the grass doesnt’ feel that weird, either. But also, pretty weird. The bars are in the right place, but the visual feedback of the wheel is odd. It just looks like its way out there. Talking to the Fox humans, several already have a ton of time on this fork and the spec is getting pretty dialed. 32″ really is here.
Revel bikes shows the future, and the near future
Revel Bikes is back, in a big little way. The brand’s reigned in it’s pre-collapse structure to something more sustainable and closer to what it’s founders intened. Which isn’t surprising, as the original co-founder, Adam Miller, is back and brought a few other founders back on board too.
The brand’s booth mixed very soon to be released bikes, just a little blurred out, and some more futuristic projects. The latter included a titanium full suspension 29er with 3D printed bikes that is stunningly smooth but, apparenty, so prohibitively expensive to make it’ll never see production. Or at least not any time in…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Canadian Cycling Magazine…