Editorial: The Eternal Suffering Of The Spoke

EditorialSingletrack Magazine

by and 4

I was once on a Mavic press launch, somewhere in the French mountains. Our merry band of bike journalists was augmented by some of Mavic’s sponsored riders, including Jérôme Clementz and the flamboyant Frenchman Cédric Gracia. As we stopped for lunch at an outdoor café, I found myself sitting next to Cédric as he was talking about the stresses that wheels have to undergo.  Now, any form of spoked wheels, from three-speed paper-round-bike to road racer, are pretty flippin’ extraordinary. As a structure they can hold many times their own weight and are flexible, yet strong. They can absorb shocks...

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For over 20 years Singletrack has been a source of information, news and entertainment for millions of mountain bike enthusiasts and as an important focal point for an amazing community of like minded riders from around the world. But it has also been a provider of jobs and income for dozens of families of our team as well as a source of revenue for hundreds of freelance contributors.

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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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Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Editorial: The Eternal Suffering Of The Spoke
  • stingmered
    Full Member

    Until “PING!”

    ‘Goddamit spoke!’

    😀

    Posted 1 year ago
    pmurden
    Full Member

    It’s stuff like this that form the huge gulf between them and us.

    Posted 1 year ago
    charliedontsurf
    Full Member

    I think it is simply great we can ride the same tech as these masters. It might come in handy if we ever find ourselves in their situation, briefly.
    I have a Campbell Brothers Bonzer surfboard. Hand sculptured by a legend. A mega refined concaved foil of uber high performance… that has spent 99% of it life grovelling in weak English waves, where any board would have been ok. But one day I found myself in “their situation”, a 20 foot point break in Morocco, wow… I could feel the fins load up and release, projecting me even faster out of every turn, energy squirting out the back… magic carpet ride. Aha… so this is what it’s for.

    Posted 1 year ago
    robertajobb
    Full Member

    “…It might come in handy if we ever find ourselves in their situation, briefly”

    I’m ready for the call to go ride my bike whilst getting paid handsomely in somewhere warm and uplift blessed, when ever they want me 👍

    Posted 1 year ago
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