We’re waiting for more on this from Red Bull but in the meantime have managed to get hold of this little clip from the wallride at Fort Bill.

This is UCI World Cup Champ Gee Atherton racing three time World Enduro Champ David Knight on Fort William’s World Cup downhill track…

Red Bull Fort William: Gee Atherton v David Knight

Here we go people, the full length video of exactly what went down at the Fort between Gee and Knighter…

Gee Atherton v David Knight Full Video

I can’t believe that a motor bike can’t beat a bike down the course. The motorway would have had Gee reeled in. As one of the comments say I reckon Knight would have been much faster if he knew the coarse even half as much as Gee.

Still….very cool seeing an enduro bike going down the trail. It looked really chunky. Wound an MX bike be even faster? Get Pastrana on it.

Knight probably was on an almost MX spec, lets face it he isn’t going to need the soft suspension/lower power of the stock bikes! Most enduro (as oposed to green lane) riders seem to be riding arround on MX bikes.

He did say in Dirt that he thought he’d be quicker on a 250 or even a 125 as even the Motorway is too tight/twisty/jumps to open the bike up.

Interestingly Gee knocked a lot of time off from run to run so track knowlage clearly isn’t everything. But Gee couldn’t have done many more runs, where as knight was ready for more even if the weather wasn’t.

Get hold of Dirt, the pics are spectacular.

Now lets see Gee get that close to Knighter at a world enduro round. 😆

Travis wouldn’t get anywhere near Knighters time.

Little more info for you:

Knight’s KTM weighs in at around 115kg and Knight himself is about 100kg (he’s a big fella). Gee’s Commencal is about 19kg.

Look how much smoother Gee is, and how quickly he can change direction.

So Gee’s weight is around 4:1 more than his bike, whereas the enduro guy is about 1:1

I guess the motorbike rider can accelerate faster, but he still has to brake to a speed where he can get that thing round the corner. If Gee can get his body weight in the right direction then getting the bike to come with him is not as hard.

If you want to see David Knight doing what he does best and showing Pastrana how its done have a search for Erzberg Enduro and also see a lot of people crashing

Watching a big motorbike dance like that on that terrain is incredibly impressive. WANT.

Knighter had it at the beginning where the track was more open but then lost time where the track closed up in the woods. Ridding an enduro bike, and a big bugger at that, I can understand!

Never used to like gee as he talks funny, but I’m warming to him past couple of seasons, and boy is he rapid on his commencal

In the Dirt magazine article it said that Knight struggled a bit on the Motorway section because the lips on the jumps were relatively steep for that type of bike so if he’d given it full welly he would have ended up in the treetops somewhere. The motorway’s not as straight as it looks on a DH bike if you’re going twice the speed either!

I’ve been told he had issues with the fact his bike was too long for the face of the jumps to the point where if he’d hit them flat out he’d have gone over the bars. Not taking anything away from Gee though, the boy’s got skills!

Good video

I suppose the course is engineered for a Downhill bike so the Enduro bike is an Alien world.

But I assumed the motor bike would win as it can accelerate for even very short starter sections

Really enjoyable vid. And bizarrely, and rather tenuously, David Knights old man used to fix my cars!

accelerate for even very short starter sections

yes, but he as to go soooooooooooo much slower roudn the corners, look at the top section, Gee is railing the berms almost flat out, Knight looked like he was practicaly coming to a standstill.

suppose the course is engineered for a Downhill bike

Yea, but “liam Kelin gets arese kicked by enduro bike on XC course” doesn’t do quite so much for Red Bull :p

Have to say, I loved the way it proved all the armchair racers wrong, I didn’t see anyone predict that he’d be faster up top and slower down the bottom. I certainly didn’t! Very cool stuff. Seems like Knight had a fair bit more to come, would be interesting to see how the gap changed if they’d kept at it.

A race back up would be interesting

I do like the staged conversation bits, Gee’s doing his best to deliver the lines and as usual looking like a bit of a knob, Knight just sits there with that smile on his face like “This script is for kids. Can I ride a bike now?”

When I said engineered for a Downhill bike I meant not a motor bike…..

If David Knight spent the same amount of time that Atherton has spent at Fort Bill it would be Knight everytime