iceBike*2012 – Saracen

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Here’s the first of many reports from Madison’s twice-yearly iceBike* show. With in-house bike companies like Genesis and Saracen, there’s lots to see.

We’re starting with some nicely rough-looking prototype frames from Saracen.

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The CX

First up is the Saracen CX. It’s a disc brake ‘trail’ cyclocross bike. There’s a tapered fork, full rack mounts and a 30.9 seatpost, so if you really fancy a dropper post… Complete prices will be around £900 and £1300.

It will, of course, come with paint...

 

Shimano cable discs

 

A trail bike for you?

 

Moving on to the Kili and the Zen. Both now have 29er versions. Here’s the Kili 29er. It’s a 100mm travel 29er trail bike, designed with a long top tube and short stem, with a 69° head angle and 44mm head tube. There will be five models, starting at £550 on up. The upper two models will be more tweaked to XC racing.

Mucho standover

 

Ready muddied

 

2x10 natch

 

And looking similar, but with 20mm more and a whole lot of attitude, is the Zen 29er.

The Zen - a 120mm 29er trail bike.

The Zen 29, Kili 29 and CX will appear in the autumn.

And now moving on to the Ariel. Although we saw the Ariel 160 at Eurobike, it’s been a while coming, but we hear that they should finally appear in April. Yay!

Here’s a neat QR bolt thru that’ll come with Ariel frames. You even get a pair of matching grips!

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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