Interbike 2014: Intense Cycles Welcomes (back) Shaun Palmer

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At Interbike this year, Intense Cycles had its newest employee on hand. You may have heard of him, he’s called Shaun Palmer. Palmer famously rode for Intense, earning a silver medal at the 1996 World Downhill Championships, less than 0.2 seconds behind Vouilloz. That bike was on display at Interbike and Palmer himself was on hand too. After attempting to qualify for the snowboarding events at the Sochi Olympics (and coming close to being selected) Palmer was contacted by Intense to see if he wanted to come and work for the company, which he accepted.

The modern Intense. Bigger wheels and carbon fibre frames
Palmer’s classic Intense from the 1996 Worlds

Palmer’s role at Intense will be to bring on the next generation of downhill racers, showing them the ropes and teaching them some of his devil-may-care attitude that he famously brought to downhill mountain biking in the ’90s when it was full of lycra-clad racers on what we’d consider cross country bikes.

Jumbo chainrings and big chain devices
Genuine Troy Lee airbrush paintjob

However, the world of downhill has moved on again since those days and gone are the Palmer/Peaty/Warner drunken days before the races. While Palmer still has the attitude, it’ll be interesting to see whether his advice and experience still has a place in the training-science world of modern downhill. However, with riders like Gee Atherton seeing motivation coaches, perhaps a bit of the old fiery spirit could make all the difference.

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Palmer was officially ‘launched’ at an afternoon event on Wednesday at Interbike. After a speech from Jeff Steber and some words from Palmer, the party continued with enthusiasm. And when it comes to having a beer, it seems that Palmer still has the same enthusiasm as the Peaty/Warner/Palmer good old days.

Brian Lopes, also on Intense this year, Jenn Gabrielli (Marketing), Jeff Steber (bossman) and the Palm.

 

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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Comments (2)

    Steber thinks he’s a rock star — he should spend more time improving the quality of his bikes rather than wasting time dying his bloody hair — grow up FS !

    Wow, seems pb2 has an issue with Steber from all the happy comments left, hows about you just don’t buy another Intense and calm down!

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