Fox and Marzocchi are pushing a new front hub through-axle standard, 15mm X 100mm, which has been adopted by Shimano, Mavic, DT and many other hub and wheel makers. It is intended for the cross-country and all-mountain market; 20mm through-axles remain the standard for big-hit forks. Fox claims it is faster than using a 9mm quick-release axle while being stiffer and very light. RockShox and Manitou have not adopted the 15mm standard.
The $239 Exposure Joystick Maxx light is a small, bright, self-contained, rechargeable Super LED light with a long burn time that clips onto a bar mount or helmet mount. The $399 Exposure Enduro Maxx is three times as bright, being essentially three Joystick Maxx lights packed into a single, self-contained unit. In between is the Exposure Race Maxx with two Super LEDs. Batteries are Li-ion built into the unit. Burn times go from three to 24 hours depending on the setting (or many days on flashing mode!).
Lezyne’s new, long 100-gram frame pump gives the stroke of a framefit pump without the mounting hassles on today’s frames. It contains a pull-out hose to avoid stressing the valve stem while pumping. The 40-gram bottle cage incorporates a groove for the pump and will be available in a carbon option as well.
There are a lot of stationary sizing cycles out there, but the $2395 Calfee Sizer, designed by Bernie Mikkelsen, allows you to crank the length in or out using the wheel at the end of the long threaded rod while the rider is pedaling. The tape measure clamped to the steerer allows you to see the exact top tube length as it changes, and the handlebar height above the ground is its actual height above the ground on the bicycle. The Purely Custom no-tools quick-change seatpost (spin the saddle to release the saddle clamp to change the tilt or fore aft, and twist it back) and the adjustable-length crank with bubble level are both designed by Jeff Keller.
JHK employs duct tape to minimize play between his shoes and his Crank Brothers Eggbeater pedals. This is in contrast to Travis Brown’s Shoe Goo method.
Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski’s Superfly 29er carbon hardtail has two inner chainrings and a SRAM mountain bike front derailleur. The front derailleur is set too high, due to its long tail otherwise hitting the chainstay. But that allows JHK to switch from a 38T to a 40T large chainring without changing his front derailleur adjustment.
Sam Schultz’s Genesis 2.0 aluminum hardtail has a mountain bike front derailleur like JHK’s, but unlike his two teammates’ bikes, it uses two outer chainrings.
Matt Opperman’s HiFi 29er.
Matt Opperman’s HiFi 29er has a SRAM Rival front derailleur, two inner chainrings and an unanodized version of Bontrager’s new spider.
FSA gave a clinic on BB30, which is an open-source bottom bracket standard started by Cannondale. It features a 30mm spindle and cartridge bearings that press into a huge bottom bracket shell 68mm wide. Snap rings stop the bearings from proceeding too far inboard, and spacers are available for mountain bikes with 73mm bottom bracket shells. This is the new SRAM RED BB30 crank.
Technical writer Lennard Zinn is canvassing Sea Otter for tidbits — today he comes back with (among other things), three different ways on one team to devise a 2X9 system on a cross country bike.
Julien Absalon can cross Houffalize off his list. Before his victory at Sunday’s World Cup opener in Belgium, the Frenchman had won on every classic World Cup course save this one. In 2007 he came close, but had to settle for second behind a streaking Jose Antonio Hermida.
Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski’s Superfly 29er carbon hardtail has two inner chainrings and a SRAM mountain bike front derailleur. The front derailleur is set too high, due to its long tail otherwise hitting the chainstay. But that allows JHK to switch from a 38T to a 40T large chainring without changing his front derailleur adjustment.
The major technical difference is the 90mm threadless bottom bracket shell. Brown says that feature may appear on other Trek mountain bikes in the future.
It might surprise you to find out just what it takes to build a one-off bike. Travis Brown can sure tell you. The Trek test rider and product developer lost one after last year’s early fall single-speed world championships. Trek built Brown a custom polished one of a kind 69er single speed for the event in September. After a pre-ride, derby and race, Brown UPS’d his bike back to the U.S. and the men in brown promptly lost it.
The Cauberg climb was the scene of a stunning finale Sunday of a wild, action-packed Amstel Gold Race that saw Damiano Cunego (Lampre) score a huge victory against the attacking Frank Schleck (CSC). Realizing his only shot against faster rivals such as Cunego and third-place finisher Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) was to attack, the Luxembourger surged away with a vengeance with 500 meters to go to drop everyone out an elite group of nine riders except Cunego. Schleck’s raid almost worked, but Italy’s “Little Prince” had another ending in mind.
Two of Italy’s biggest stars are on the mend and hope to be back at their best in time for major upcoming goals. Two-time world champ Paolo Bettini is skipping both Amstel Gold Race and Flèche Wallone due to a broken rib suffered in last week’s Vuelta al País Vasco while Daniele Bennati will finally make his debut with Liquigas following a lengthy recovery from a knee injury.
Baltimore Bike Path
Powerful gusting winds didn’t sway 19-year-old Tiffany Cromwell (Colavita Olive Oil-Sutter Home) or Michael Grabinger (Successful Living), who took NRC victories on the Laguna Seca Raceway Saturday at the Sea Otter Classic. The men’s and women’s events played out very differently. Cromwell rode solo off the front of a break for the final few laps. Grabinger, however, made it into an unusual four-man breakaway with two teammates and David Clinger (Rock Racing). The men lapped the field — twice — before Successful Living lined up a leadout in the stiff crosswind.
You may have thought that Julien Absalon had won every important cross-country mountain bike race on the planet. The Frenchman owns four elite world titles, three World Cup titles, a swarm of World Cup wins and Olympic gold. And to top that off, he won our VeloNewsInternational Cyclist of the Year prize last year as well. But Absalon, now 27, has never won mountain biking’s storied Houffalize round of the UCI World Cup. He has been second once and fourth three times. This Sunday, he’ll get another shot. Is he up to the challenge?
Anna Milkowski is a member of Team Advil-Chapstick. This diary entry was completed a few hours after she won the 2008 Tour of the Battenkill Valley in New York — Editor Redlands exists as a haze — a temporary exchange of lobster gloves and neoprene flippers for sunscreen and swimming pools — then a quick return to winter. The experience hinted I had survived this challenging winter of indoor riding and even a yard-sale crash on black ice, but the season began for real today with the Battenkill Roubaix in Salem, New York.
Near-record setting temperatures sent dust, gravel and rocks flying at the Tour of the Battenkill Valley on Saturday, but racers from the Great White North, perhaps the least adjusted to the heat, managed to dominate the event. Bruno Langlois, racing for Team Volkswagen, pipped five-time Canadian national champion Mark Walters (Team R.A.C.E.), following an 82-mile event that sent racers over a combination of dirt and paved roads in a quiet corner of New York State.
The list of favorites for Sunday's Amstel Gold Race seems nearly as long as the number of years the race has been held: 43. For the first time in more than a decade, neither one of Holland’s eternal favorites for Amstel Gold — Erik Dekker or Michael Boogerd — can be counted on to carry national pride. Each won Amstel once, beating Lance Armstrong each time in what was one of the biggest wins in each of their respective careers.
Team Type 1 Sets Sights On A Stage Win In Georgia Tybee Island, Ga. — Team Type 1 brings an arsenal to the Tour de Georgia presented by AT&T that is equipped to deliver a stage win during the seven-day, 590-mile (949.5 km) race that begins Monday. Team Type 1’s roster for the race will be Emile Abraham (TRI), Moises Aldape (MEX), Fabio Calabria (AUS), Glen Chadwick (AUS), Chris Jones (USA), Valeriy Kobzarenko (UKR), Ian MacGregor (USA) and Matt Wilson (AUS).
We’ll end with Zipp’s negative drag PowerTap equipped Sub 9 disc wheel, because we’ll pick up here with the next installment and look at what Zipp and SRAM have cooked up new for the road. The PowerTap hub only adds 120 grams to any of Zipp’s disc wheels; the Sub 9 tubular equipped with a PowerTap weighs 1120-grams. SRAM announced that it will introduce its own line of wheels at the tradeshows this fall. It will keep Zipp as its high-end road brand, so for fun I’ll take a guess that in six months time, SRAM might have a viable mountain bike wheel? It would surely round out the line nicely.
The French tire maker’s tubeless ready cyclocross tire is finally set to go and being produced.
The tread of the Toro is modeled after the Bulldog.
The Toro is a new higher-volume big treaded 29-inch tire that comes with a Tubeless Ready bead instead of a tubeless casing to keep the weight down.
Hutchinson said it has a 25mm Fusion tubeless tire coming down its development line as well as higher mileage tubeless training tire called the Intensive.
The wheelset has 44mm carbon rims, steel spokes: 18 front, and 20 rear; it weighs 1537 grams. The cost is not yet set but may be close to $4000.
Speaking of tubeless compatible, tire maker Hutchinson has teamed with Corima to offer a Hutchinson branded carbon tubeless road wheelset, called the RT1.
Both wheels feature 29-inch rims that are tubeless compatible.
The XLR relies on the brand’s top-end hub, with loose balls and angular contact races.
And this is the upper tier, the Red Metal 29 XLR; both wheels forgo alloy spokes in favor of steel.
The biggest news in the Fulcrum camp may be the two new 29-inch wheelsets. This is the economical version called the Red Metal SL, which is priced at just $350.
Just in case any of the employees at QBP, the brand’s U.S. distributor, get any ideas.
The rim is tubeless compatible.
The carbon mountain bike clinchers feature Fulcrum’s 20mm axle, aluminum spokes and nipples, but are laced normally, not with the brand’s 2:1 spoke ratio.
Fulcrum’s Red Carbon wheels will be available later this year. Currently, Julian Absalon is waging another season on the wheels.
The rim-brake compatible Red Metal Zero mountain bike rims use a hub with Campy ‘s Record internals, aside from being proven and easily serviceable. Campagnolo’s road ceramic bearing bearings can be dropped right into the mountain wheel.
Fulcrum had a new color option available for its Red Metal Zero mountain bike wheelset. It’s the inverse of the new option for road bikes. The road version keeps red spokes with a black rim, while the mountain version gets a red rim and black spokes. Technically both wheels are unchanged.
SwissStop is sharing space with Edge at Sea Otter, and had a new pad shape to show. The new shape will replace the current Campagnolo-compatible pad and will be available with SwissStop’s three pad compounds. Edge wheels exclusively use the Yellow King carbon compound. A bike’s worth of the carbon pads cost a whopping $64, but they are the best performing in Edge’s testing and our experience.
Edge will offer four mountain bars, in the next 8-10 weeks. They come in two styles, flat or rise, with two clamp options, 25.4mm or 31.8mm. One of the most interesting pieces of feedback from testers is that the bars aren’t as stiff as some of the competition’s offerings. Kevin Nelson, one of Edge’s two carbon engineers, thought it was something he would have to change, but instead the testers embraced the feel. “I guess you learn something everyday,” he said.
This fork has a King headset base plate molded in.