TREK SUPERCALIBER
PRICE: R179 999 / TREKBIKES.COM
With her blonde curls billowing behind her helmet as she flies around XC World Cup courses, Jolanda Neff is hard to miss. Likewise the bike she was riding last season, which was as eye-catching as it was shrouded in mystery.
Indeed, Trek hadn’t yet released the Supercaliber, and the ‘top-secret’ rear suspension was shielded by a fabric sleeve. The fact that Trek designed a custom sleeve simply for this purpose tells you something about the black magic at the back.
Now the Supercaliber is here, and that black magic is called Isostrut – a brand-new suspension design that seeks to marry the stiffness and efficiency of a hardtail with a more technically capable full-suspension bike.
Before the Supercaliber, Jolanda could have chosen between the Procaliber – a 100mm hardtail, with a rear de-coupler that provides 11mm of undamped travel – and the 120/115mm Top Fuel, a full-suspension bike that has become slacker and less race-focused over time. The Supercaliber sits right in the middle.
Isostrut uses a main pivot and a custom-designed Fox shock that lives inside a Kashima-coated strut. There’s no pivot at the rear axle; the thin seat stays are designed to flex. The shock provides about 55mm of rear travel, with the flexing stays adding 5mm of deflection for a total rear travel figure of 60mm.
Even in its ‘budget’ form, the Supercaliber is a pricey proposition – the 9.7 model will cost you R80k. But Jolanda would never settle for SRAM NX and a Reba fork, so why should you? The top-of-the-range 9.9 AXS, for R100k more, is probably the fastest XC mountain bike on the market. With a Rockshox SID SL Ultimate fork, Bontrager Kovee XXX 30 carbon wheels, wireless SRAM XX1 Eagle AXS drivetrain, carbon crankset and SRAM Level Ultimate brakes with carbon levers, it weighs a claimed 9.4kg for a medium.
The beautiful parts contribute, of course; but much of the weight saving is thanks to the sub-2kg frame. Trek kept the weight down by eliminating the swing link and second pivot at the rear axle, instead using thin, low-modulus carbon-fibre seat stays to handle the Isostrut’s travel. Amazingly, the Supercaliber frame is 23g lighter than that of the hardtail Procaliber.
Ride enough trail bikes with long, low, slack geometry, and you might forget what it’s like to really control a bike. The Supercaliber reminds you very quickly: on more technical, definitely-not-xc terrain, it’s a bike you have to ride deliberately. There’s no slack head-tube angle, dropper post, or long-travel fork to save you if you get your line wrong. You can find a rhythm on technical, root-filled trails, certainly; you just have to have the bike-handling skills of a pro. Keep practising!
On Xc-oriented singletrack, however, with rocks and roots but no obstacles larger than you’d find on a World Cup course, the ride is sublime. There’s almost no pedal bob, yet the suspension becomes active over rock gardens and descents. Acceleration is razor-sharp, as is the steering; and those 29-inch wheels maintain momentum with ease. It’s everything you want from an XC race bike right now. – Jon Minster