I can see where they are coming from downhill bikes are so specialized you ride it down for 2 minutes then what you cant really do anything else on it like a trail centre or ride to the pub can you ?
But that was always the case. The 222 was horrific to pedal! Arguably they only moved the pivot to make the supension better, it didn’t matter what you did with the shock (5th etc were already making platform shocks well before the 223 let alone the 224).
“freeride” bikes like the patriot have fallen way out of fashion, and it must be hard to sell a downhill bike with zero world cup pedigree. The last time it was successful at that level was nearly a decade ago. It’s probably still a great bike, but most people are going to want what they see on the podium every sunday.
I think the Patriot (if re-imagined today) would still be in fashion, a DH bike that can pedal uphill, that’s “enduro”. Just that model creep has filled that niche with the five, which now has more travel than the original patriot, and the five has been replaced as a burly XC bike by the gyro.
Agree on the lack of exposure for the DH bikes though, they’re not much cheeper than the cometition, which all have a propper race pedigree at world cup level. I guess it’s a cos thing, DH looks horrificly expensive these days to run a world cup team. The Animal/Peaty era was post the original boom, so I guess he was, post losing his contract with GT, ‘cheep’.