World Cup overall, mens World Champ and Womens World Champ, all on 650b.
Though, to be fair if schurter was on a 29er he’d probably still be winning. He genuinely does seem to prefer 650b, though.
I think 29ers’ll always suffer from the fact that when they first started to get major attention, too many of them sucked balls, and all the early focus was on XC. I rode an old KHS full suss, it was pish, luckily I judged it as a bike not as a wheelsize so it didn’t put me off… If you ride a great one- the Five or Remedy frinstance- they’re ridiculously good. Best Orange I’ve ever ridden. But getting people on them in the first place is harder, and it took a long time to get there. And even now I reckon many companies would struggle to actually deliver a good one.
Bottom line… They created the interest in bigger wheels, but it was too big and scary a change for most. 650b offered the perfect combination- a bit of novelty to encourage people to buy new things, but with a change so trivial that nobody was scared of it. Lots of people disliked the change, because of the forced obsolesence of existing bikes but nobody dislikes the wheelsize, because it rides so similiarly to 26. Basically it’s the conflict between difference and familiarity.