THE ART OF STICKY RUBBER
Five Ten’s Stealth rubber is without doubt the benchmark of lat-pedal grip. Following the launch of the brand’s new cutting-edge Trailcross shoes, we take a tour through their 35-year history to see how they came to be
When choosing what to wear on your feet to go mountain biking, there’s a whole lot of options out there. But if you’re looking for uncompromised traction, there’s still one shoe brand that stand above the rest – Five Ten. Yes, their shoes have had their longevity issues in the past, and wearing their original Impact models in the wet was like riding with two waterlogged sofas on your feet, but with complaints like these well behind them and numerous World Cup wins to their credit, we look back at the history of how the grippiest kicks around first came to market…
In the beginning
The story starts not with mountain biking, but with rock climbing. Five Ten’s founder Charlie Cole (pictured top left) was a fanatical big-wall climber, based in the climbing Mecca of Yosemite Valley, California. Having spent years lugging massive haul bags up to the base of routes and off the summits, Cole decided that the tennis shoes he and most others were using just didn’t cut it. One too many near misses scrambling up the rocks is what led to the world’s first ‘approach’ shoe – the Five Tennie, Tennie referring to tennis and 5.10 to the Yosemite climbing grade system.
Cole was an engineer so he scoured books, spoke to chemists, got samples made at local factories and eventually came up with a new rubber formula to test out on the rock. This was the first version of modern Stealth rubber (C4), and it revolutionised climbing, making the most non-existent of footholds usable and pushing standards through the roof. The S1 compound he developed soon after is a rubber still used on MTB shoes today, just like the MI6 blend, which was originally made for Tom Cruise to climb the then-tallest building in the world in 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
Cole quickly saw how wide-ranging the benefits of the S1 rubber could be, so he started making it available to resoling shops to be put on any shoe. The dot pattern he developed for his approach shoes – designed to have some hiking tread while maintaining maximum contact with the rock – just happened to be perfect for gripping bike pedals too. Climbers in the late ’80s were the first to figure this out, and in the ’90s Cole worked on various projects to bring a mountain bike shoe to market.
Making an Impact
The first time we realised the benefits that sticky-rubber soles could have for our riding was in the early 2000s, and the shoes they were attached to weren’t Five Tens. Instead they were made by Intense Cycles. Founder Jeff Steber, having seen the Stealth rubber’s potential, capitalised on it by using it in his own shoes. With less need to clip in to ride absolutely flat out, flat-pedal icons such as Sam Hill (above), Chris Kovarik and Nathan Rennie blasted onto the World Cup scene
and started collecting wins, thanks in part to this new rubber revolution. When Five Ten’s first flat-pedal shoe, the Impact, hit the shelves in 2005, it prompted scores of DH fans to ditch their SPDs and switch to flats (including several of us here at MBUK). With pedal development happening simultaneously, ‘foot out, flat out’ was the trend everyone wanted to be a part of.
Other models such as the Freerider followed soon after, then in 2010 came Five Ten’s first clipless shoe – a Greg Minnaar signature version of the Hellcat. From here on it was more a case of evolution rather than revolution, with their shoes becoming lighter, more ergonomic and weatherproof.
Extending the family
Up until 2011, this R&D was still overseen by Cole himself. Five Ten was a family-run business, with Cole taking care of product development while his parents handled orders and marketing. This year marked the biggest change in Five Ten’s history though, as Cole sold the brand to sports industry juggernaut adidas. In 2017 R&D moved to Germany, where it still takes place, but these days the company has spread back to its American roots, with offices in Oregon and Colorado as well. With Five Ten now having access to a bigger knowledge base and far greater resources than before, this leads us on to the brand’s most recent development – the new Trailcross shoes (above). Combining technology from adidas’s Terrex trail/hiking range with Five Ten’s rubber, the brand set out to make flat-pedal shoes that tick all the boxes: grippy on and off the bike, supportive and protective. And all made in a sustainable fashion.
It feels like a clashing of worlds – the dirtbag, misfit climbers, the muddy MTBers and the clean, corporate athleticism of adidas – but somehow it seems to work, and the shoes they’re producing are still some of the best around.