Bikes & Big Ideas

Chromag has been doing things very differently from most bike companies for decades now, helping to pioneer modern hardcore hardtails — and doing so in Whistler, BC, in the shadow of the legendary bike park — not exactly classic hardtail terrain. So when Chromag launched their first production adult full-suspension bikes late last year, it wasn’t a huge surprise that the Darco and Lowdown stood ou...

David Golay, Dylan Wood, and Simon Stewart sat down to chat about a whole bunch of the bikes we’re reviewing currently, from the Chromag Darco to the Commencal Supreme, with a ton of other ones in between, including the Pivot Shuttle AM and the Trek Fuel EXe AL. Along the way, we discuss bike design more broadly; eMTB drive systems and their tradeoffs; and a whole bunch more. TOPICS & TIMES: C...

Aptos, CA is a small beach town that has produced an incredible number of world-class mountain bikers, and Ryan “R-Dog” Howard has a lot of great stories to share about the scene that gave rise to him, Cam and Tyler McCaul, and too many more to list — not to mention serving as the winter riding escape for the likes of Brandon Semenuk, Martin Soderstrom, and many others. And along the way, we chat...

When Jacob Rheuban founded Prevelo in 2017, he had no engineering background and no experience in the bike industry, but identified a need for better kids' bikes, and set out to fill it. And now, more than six years later, he’s got a lot of great stories to tell and insights to share about both what it takes to start a bike company from scratch, but also what makes for a good kids’ bike, and how t...

Miranda Miller has done a lot of different things in her career, from winning DH World Champs to racing the EWS (and now EDR), but in the last few years she’s branched out more than ever and is having more fun than ever before. So we sat down with Miranda to chat about her DVRGNT Minds project and how she charted this new course for her career; getting into gravel riding as a gravity-oriented moun...

When we first had Lal Bikes founder and Supre Drive inventor Cedric Eveleigh on the show about a year and a half ago, he’d just announced the Supre Drive — a wild take on reinventing the mountain bike derailleur — to the world. A lot has happened since then, including the first production Supre Drive bikes being delivered to customers, so we brought Cedric back on the show — joined by fellow Lal e...

Summer is in full swing and we’ve been testing a ton of new bikes and gear, so I sat down with Simon Stewart and Dylan Wood to chat about some of the things that have stood out to us the most, including a variety of bikes, SRAM’s Transmission (including the new GX version), and along the way, we veer off on a few tangents, including some discussion of the World Cup Downhill season so far. TOPICS &...

Deviate Cycles is well known for their high-pivot Trail and Enduro bikes, and that concept has gained a lot of traction in recent years, but getting consumers to accept new ideas can be challenging. Deviate co-founder Ben Jones has a lot to say about the balance of bringing new ideas to market without alienating potential customers; the tradeoffs of gearbox bikes and why they haven’t widely caught...

Beyond Racing started as a pipedream of Anna Newkirk and Abby Hogie: wouldn’t it be cool to have a World Cup race team that you run and race for with your best friend? Few people have the skills or determination to make it happen, though, and the story of what Anna and Abby — with the help of none other than Eliot Jackson — have pulled off is a great one. So we sat down with the two of them to hea...

We’re testing a ton of new bikes with more on the way (stay tuned!) so David Golay recently sat down with Dylan Wood and Simon Stewart to talk about the Revel Ranger and Commencal T.E.M.P.O. ; offer more thoughts on the new SRAM Transmission ; and give a rundown on a whole bunch of suspension we’re testing from EXT, Öhlins, and Manitou. TOPICS & TIMES: Commencal T.E.M.P.O. (1:15) Revel Ranger...

Making it as a World Cup Downhill racer is hard and, as we discuss in this episode, the new rule changes to the series for 2023 just might make it harder. So we sat down with Wyn Masters , whose incredible new Privateer Program — the escalation of his longstanding Privateer Award, whose past winners include Camille Balanche and Nina Hoffmann — to talk about all of it, including why he started the...

EXT Suspension founder Franco Fratton is a wealth of information when it comes to all things suspension, and in the third installment of our deep dive on suspension series, Franco and I cover everything from the tradeoffs between air and coil springs to the history of coil springs being used on wheeled vehicles; EXT’s new Aria air shock; inverted vs. conventional forks; and Franco teases an upcomi...

Designing, prototyping, testing, and refining a carbon fiber wheel is deceptively complicated. Things like weight, stiffness, vertical compliance, and durability are the standard buzzwords for talking about a new wheelset, but how do you strike the right balance between all of them, and how do you go about validating a new design? And what how does athlete feedback factor in, especially considerin...

Jesse Melamed won the 2022 EWS Overall, and then, despite that success, made the move to Canyon from longtime frame sponsor Rocky Mountain. So we sat down with Jesse to chat about what he changed with his mental approach and bike setup to make the 2022 season come together; why it was time for a team change despite that success; his decision-making process in choosing his new race bike from Canyon...

After tackling broader questions like “which bike and ski brands are the current holders of their respective ‘Cool Kids Belts’” in Part One of Bikes vs. Skis, 2023 last week, we’re diving into the head-to-head comparisons: which bike company is most comparable to Rossignol skis? Who is the ski equivalent of Guerrilla Gravity? And many, many more. And we’ll be back with a third installment next wee...

Richie Schley is one of a kind — pioneering freeride mountain biker, former pro skier, hilarious storyteller, & much more — and in this conversation, we cover a lot of ground, from the early days of freeride MTB to the current state of the sport and what he’d like to see change, and along the way we chat about his recent bachelor party; how Richie was too early in adopting fanny packs; how har...

When Payson McElveen rode across Iceland in a single pull a few years ago, he found something in that effort that’s not present in his racing career and immediately knew he wanted to follow it up with something in the same vein. So he dusted off his globe, and after an immense amount of planning, he put together a monster route across Tasmania, spanning 360 miles and nearly 35,000 feet of climbing...

We just got back from the 2023 iteration of the Sea Otter Classic, and while we’re definitely still recovering, we sat down to chat about a bunch of the most interesting new gear we saw at the show — including Push Industries’ mysterious new fork, a bunch of new drivetrains / drivetrain components, a ton of new DH bikes, and a whole lot more. And we also discuss a few of the broader trends that we...

Project Bike Tech was founded to answer the question “what if there was something like high school auto shop classes, but for bikes?” And now 15 years later, they’re operating in dozens of schools across a bunch of states, and are expanding rapidly. So we sat down with their Executive Director, Mercedes Ross, to talk about what Project Bike Tech does and how they designed their curriculum; what ki...

We’ve been hard at work testing a whole bunch of new bikes and gear, and David Golay and Simon Stewart sat down to talk about a whole bunch of it, including comparisons of two very different Enduro bikes, the Yeti SB160 and Cotic RocketMAX; two long-travel, big-battery eMTBs, the Pivot Shuttle LT and Specialized Turbo Levo; the new SRAM Transmission, and a bunch more — and along the way they tease...

Bikes have become much, much better built over the last couple of decades, but Jason Quade felt like the tools to work on them hadn’t kept pace, and (sort of accidentally) founded Abbey Bike Tools to fill that gap in the market. And now more than a decade later, Abbey has an extensive catalog of some of the best-quality bike tools out there. So we sat down with Jason to look back on the founding o...

There aren’t many riders who do such a wide range of riding as well as Phil Atwill. He’s had great results on the Downhill World Cup circuit, his film parts are super varied and impressive, and on top of all that he’s also now running the Propain Positive team. So we sat down with Phil to get his takes (and stories) from all of it, including the burgeoning Greek MTB scene, the changes to the 2023...

The new Eagle Transmission is a big addition to SRAM’s lineup and while it still uses a derailleur, cassette, and chain as we’re all used to, a lot of the details are very, very different. So we sat down with SRAM’s Chris Mandell to talk about the new groupsets and the thinking behind them, from the “Full Mount” derailleur, to all the ways that they’ve simplified installation and setup, the new co...

There are a lot of people doing amazing things on bikes and putting together mind-blowing video segments, but nobody does it quite like Caleb Holonko. His Lights Out edit from late last year was absolutely wild, and his recent follow-up, In the Know was a very worthy sequel. So we sat down with Caleb to chat about his approach to riding, filming, and building trails; the ways that growing up in No...

Cotic Bikes was an early pioneer in the UK’s hardcore hardtail scene, and now 20 years later they’re still doing things their own way — including making a line of (mostly) steel full-suspension bikes to go with those hardtails. So we sat down with their founder, Cy Turner, to get the super interesting story of Cotic’s founding and development; Cy’s approach to bike design and why they do thin...