The Pinkbike Podcast

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with World Cup racer turned skunkworks rider Bryn Atkinson alongside Shimano's MTB product manager Nick Murdick to chat about drivetrain development, rider feedback, gearboxes, and a lot more. Although they didn't spill the launch dates for new XTR and Saint, they did give us some great insight on why products like Saint sometimes take a (ridiculously) l...

We get asked some great questions in the comments on both articles and videos, so Dario, Kaz and Henry thought it was about time we answered some! To get your question answered, tag an editor in your comment or leave us a voice message here.

Matt and Henry have been busy. Very busy. In the opening weeks of the bike park, they crammed in just about as many runs as they could handle on these bikes to compare, contrast and understand what makes a great downhill bike in 2024. Here, they talk about their feelings and rank the bikes from bottom to top, explaining their reasoning as they go. If you have a question about bike tech, news or ra...

Brian Park and Sarah sat down with Federico Sbrissa, Pinarello's Chief Marketing Officer and Federico Meneghetti, the R&D Engineer on the mountain bike project just after Tom Pidcock took the win at the Nove Mesto World Cup at the end of May. We talked about why Pinarello decided to make a mountain bike after a decade without one, how their prototype mountain bike came to win a World Cup race just...

There was a time when every new bike seemed to be in a spiral of one-upping each other. Saying it came down to who could make the biggest bike would be oversimplifying the conversation, but at the same time, reaches swelled and swelled before coming back down in recent years. Why? We also discuss idlers, fads, and why the mixed-wheeled bike might just be our favourite setup yet.

Orbea has over 180 years of manufacturing heritage, starting as a gun and ammunition manufacturer in the Basque Country of Northern Spain way back in 1840. When the business of gun making waned, the company pivoted and began using the tubing machines and raw materials they'd acquired to manufacture bicycles. In the 1930s, Orbea made the switch to bicycle manufacturing entirely, and by the time the...

Last month Dario and Brian traveled down to Auburn, California to tour Specialized’s new facility and record a podcast. We were the first media through the door of their new Auburn Innovation Centre, and got to peek behind the curtain of the Ride Dynamics team—arguably the most influential product development team in our industry. The office itself was still under construction. In contrast to Spec...

Both forks will prove to be very popular, not least because one of them could likely feature on your next enduro bike. Which do we prefer most, and why?

The tenth-anniversary edition of Red Bull Hardline Wales took place over the weekend, and so Mike Kazimer, Dario DiGiulio, Christina Chappetta join Sarah Moore to chat about the progression, the insane runs, things we noticed from the sidelines, and whether we think we could ride the 2024 course if it was all we focused on for the next five years.

Bang-for-buck bikes, ever-improving geometry and some terrible naming conventions, it's never been a better time to get an entry-level mountain bike. And that's not even factoring some of the post-pandemic deals that are on offer. Kaz, Sarah and Dario fill you in with all the details from their test.

We catch up with the tech team to talk all about what they're reviewing, what we're seeing at races and what they would love to ride.

Martin Maes is something of a contradiction. On one hand he's an articulate man with a stoical outlook, and on the other he quite simply doesn't do things quietly. Whether it's coming onto the scene as one of the first true-enduro youngsters before eventually delivering on his potential after many years of trying with GT, or getting mired in a doping scandal and beating downhill racers at their ow...

Sarah chatted with Christopher Blevins right after he got back from his whirlwind of a trip to Brazil where he won the first Olympic cross-country race of the season. The 26-year-old American former Short Track World Champion last won a World Cup XCO back in 2021 in Snowshoe, but he came out with all cylinders firing in Brazil with the goal of qualifying for the Paris Olympics and getting as many...

We discuss our picks for this weekend's race, explain why your season won't be as easy as you think, and who are the likely winners.

While Henry enjoys riding shorter travel cross-country bikes, he doesn't follow the pro circuit all that closely. In this episode, Sarah gives Henry an idiot's guide to XC and why there's more to it than meets the eye.

We chat about how he got into riding as a teenager, how he bounced back and forth chasing summer in the UK and New Zealand for years, his time as a World Cup mechanic, why he left GMBN, some of his endurance feats including an attempt at the FKT riding across all of New Zealand and riding 1,000,000 feet in a year, and much more. Henry's an incredibly introspective person and so this was a really i...

Romain Dompnier and Madison Wallinger explain what goes into a season of in-depth mountain biking coverage, the power of archetypes and how race coverage can help the sport grow.

Remi Gauvin has seen it all in racing, from their early days as a promising junior to climbing the ranks of Enduro. In this chat we cover his roots in downhill, what it really takes to do both disciplines and how the sport is changing - for good and for bad.

Tara Llanes has been wildly accomplished at the high levels of multiple sports - BMX, MTB, and wheelchair basketball, not to mention wheelchair tennis - and she also has a whole lot more life experience to share. In 2007, in what she thought was her second-to-last race before retiring from her career as a mountain biker, a devastating crash changed things for her. She spent the next several years...

Amy Ertel and Steve Vanderhoek are two people who bring a lot to our sport: both in terms of their excellent riding and when it comes to their jobs and risk preparedness. Amy is a nurse, Steve is a firefighter, and both are extraordinary riders.

Dario and Brian are joined by Alvin from our sister publication Velo to discuss the products we saw, the factories we toured, and the food we ate at this year's Taipei Cycle Show.

Could you choose your bike out of a lineup? If so, how? Whether it's strange suspension setups, cockpit changes or just particular tires, we all have things that make our bikes our own.

Eliot Jackson has been a busy guy after retiring from World Cup DH racing. He's a Red Bull commentator, an ambassador for various cycling brands, the founder of Grow Cycling Foundation, and the organizer of a brand new event called Aspire. As you can imagine from listening to him on live broadcasts, he's a really fun guy to chat with and Alicia, Brian and I were lucky to catch up with him earlier...

Sarah Moore is incredibly important to the Pinkbike, cross-synergized ecosystem of symbiotic workflow, not least because she guides so much content and new coverage. Here, she and Henry talk about her racing World Cups, "what's good", women in the industry, and the slightly more light-hearted side of breaking both arms.