BMC FOURSTROKE 01 LT ONE

The Swiss brand lets you pedal like Pidcock – just without the gold medals and Grand Tours

€8,499 • 29in • bmc-switzerland.com

Tom Pidcock is one lucky son of a gun. And not because Mathieu van der Poel went out the front door at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It’s not even because on any given day he can race for the win at the highest level in road racing, cyclocross or mountain biking. That’s down to a (brief) lifetime dedicated to his craft and good genetics, not good fortune.

When I say Pidcock is lucky, it’s because he was in the fortunate position of being able to choose which mountain bike he wanted to race. A rare position for a sponsored rider at any level, let alone someone capable of competing for, and ultimately winning, Olympic gold.

How did he find himself in this particular situation? He currently rides for Ineos Grenadiers and the team is sponsored by Pinarello for road and cyclo-cross. Because the Italian brand doesn’t make a XC full-suspension race bike, that left Pidcock free to choose.

Rumour has it, he tested a bunch of bikes from different brands before settling on the BMC Fourstroke. Not that you could tell he is riding one as all of the graphics have been removed. Now, given that BMC gets no direct publicity we can only assume that no money changed hands and it was genuinely Pidcock’s first choice. That, or, it is one of the best guerrilla marketing campaigns ever.

Given that Pidcock has a custom build with electronic SR Suntour suspension, it’s hard to know which configuration of Fourstroke he’s riding. That’s right, there are two, and both use the exact same full carbon frame. The standard Fourstroke gets a 50mm stroke shock to deliver 100mm of travel, while the LT version we have here retains the same eye-to-eye length but gets a 5mm longer stroke to boost travel to 120mm.

But the numbers don’t quite add up. If the standard Fourstroke delivers 100mm of travel from a 50mm stroke shock that gives it a 2:1 leverage ratio. Now, given that BMC upped the shock stroke by 5mm on the LT, it should be obvious that it will only provide an extra 10mm of travel. So the LT is a 110mm bike not a 120mm bike, which is exactly the amount of travel that I measured in the workshop. To confuse matters further, the stock Fourstoke actually has 104mm

It was genuinely the British rider’s first choice