evolution of the species

how a decade of racing changed the downhill bike

In 2010, the carbon-versus-alloy debate was still a hot topic. GT had just released their carbon fibre Fury and the forums were alight with debate about whether this material was suitable for DH frames or should be kept for weightweenie XCers. The Santa Cruz Syndicate soon silenced any doubters when Greg

Minnaar won the opening World Cup round aboard an all-new carbon V10 (1).

The next point of contention arose soon after, and this is a discussion that still rages today – wheel size. At the 2012 World Champs, Swiss Junior Noel Niederberger took to the track on some slightly-larger-than-usual wheels. He finished fourth, just behind Connor Fearon, Richie Rude and Loïc Bruni, all on 26in wheels. It took another two seasons for the 650b (aka 27.5in) size to really catch on and claim some big results, despite its earlier uptake on trail bikes. Gwin’s first victory on 650b wheels came on the notoriously flat Pietermaritzburg track, where he rode a Specialized Enduro EVO, beefed up with a lowered Fox 40 fork. His teammate Troy Brosnan then won Fort William on a modified Demo 8 downhill bike (2). A week later, at Leogang, we saw Josh Bryceland take the last ever World Cup win on 26in wheels.

Wheel-size experimentation wasn’t to end there, though. The Syndicate are always ones to cause a stir, and at the start of the 2017 race season they arrived in the pits with a new 29inwheeled machine (3). The tall Minnaar seemed to be riding with newfound vigour, and it left many teams scrambling to modify dropouts and linkages to squeeze in bigger wheels.

Then in 2019, the UCI rewrote the rulebook to say that wheel sizes could be mixed. ‘Mullet bikes’, with a 29in wheel up front and 650b at the rear, proved popular with many riders – pictured here is Finn Iles’ modified aluminium Specialized Demo 8 29 (4) – and enjoyed some significant successes. This has led to what seems to be a trend for riding bikes with a wheel size proportional to rider height.