Yesterday, Wednesday April 7th saw Commencal and the Athertons launch their new look team at Wales’s Coed Llandegla centre, as the complete family roster prepare for the upcoming 2010 season. Our man Nathan was there to meet up with them.
With the bond between the family and Commencal growing even stronger, the team’s relationship has become more involved, allowing greater potential in areas such as product development and combined with Commencal, they have honed their rides for the 2010 season.
This season’s DH bike has had a makeover from last season’s rig in an effort to shave off excess weight and improve handling and responsivness.
Some of the major changes have seen the removal of the adjustable rear axle used last season. This year the riders will have a selection of rear swing arms available to adapt to the varying terrain at each racing event. The headtube area has also seen an overhaul as there are no longer any gussets in use and the adjustable headtube used last season has been scrapped for a fixed headtube angle.
The Atherton team spent much of the off-season working closely with Fox and the new 2010 Fox 40 forks come with massive 40mm stanchions with a new slippery gold coveringwhich is claimed to improve the smoothness of the ride. Alongside Fox, Continental tyres have also been working closely with the Athertons to develop a new range of tyres for 2010.
Presented along with the new DH bikes for this season were some of Commencal’s other 2010 bikes including the new MaxMax dirt jump bike with Commencal’s new dirt jump fork and Dan Atherton’s titanium 4X bike which we will be getting in to test shortly – look out for that in the next issue of Singletrack.
Also on show was the Athertons’ new tour bus which is certain to be a head turner because, not only is the graphic pretty amazing, but the bus is due to be kitted out with a massive subwoofer system which will keep the team bouncing to every event this year.
Top mountain bike film chappie Clay Porter has made this promotional video for the team too…
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“Athertons’ new tour bus”
Err, thats a horse box lorry, not a tour bus no?
anyone else think those tyres look like the love child of maxxis HR’s and DHF’s ?
yep …agree on the tyres… first thing I noticed!
Saw the tour bus on Tuesday on the A5 near Shrewsbury …… looked very nice.
I don’t usually dribble over ti bikes, but that 4X frame looks quite sexual.