Juliana Wilder & Santa Cruz Blur review: XC race bikes fit for trails too

Where have we been on the Blur and Wilder? Well after our introduction at Ard’ Rock (not during the race, we’re not that cruel) and a few local rides it was at the deep end for a ten-hour cross-country endurance race. Now don’t let the cross-country part of that sentence fool you. The 10@Kirroughtree is a serious course, and the race day conditions were biblical. Heavy rain had hammered on the roof of the van all night and wasn’t planning on easing up until well into the afternoon. We applied the appropriate amount of wet chain lube (lots), donned our gore-tex winter boots (in August), failed to prepare any food or drinks with any conviction and rolled to the start line.

The Maxxis Aspen’s on the Blur were not befitting of the conditions; aside from that obvious error, I appeared to be on the perfect bike. Amanda’s Rekon race tyres showed a few more tread blocks but in reality nothing short of a mud spike was really going to help us in this weather. The conditions were treacherous and the course was seriously challenging as a result. There are several proper off-piste sections covering all gradient ranges from unrideable sloppy climbs to equally unrideable mud slide descents; think off-piste enduro trails with added climbing. Make no mistake, this was one serious bike testing arena.

How did the Santa Cruz Blur and Juliana Wilder hold up to this somewhat abusive method of bike testing?

They were awesome all day, despite our attempts to thwart their progress with crashes and the worst mud we’ve ever seen. The supple ‘superlight’ suspension (whose design was commented on in the Blur first look) gave the light cross country tyres the best chance of finding traction on the mixture of hardpack trails, bedrock boulder gardens and the terrific mud and roots in the off-piste sections!

Frame

The Blur and Wilder frames are of the same carbon moulds and are composite works of art. They’re precisely the smooth flowing examples of carbon fibre engineering we’ve come to expect from Santa Cruz. The Blur’s matt finish Sockeye Salmon Pink colour, attractive when new, only grew on me during our time together and I even bought a riding t-shirt in a matching shade. The Wilder is finished in gloss Purple Sweetness and Lavender, a close representation of Palma Violets.

The mix of straight, slender and for the most part relatively round tubing of the top tube, down tube, seat stays and chain stays are all joined with fluid joints. There is little to dispute about the simple aesthetic beauty of the frame. The flex-pivoting seat stays ensure the back of the bike stays looking seamlessly neat.

The medium frames we have here have slightly different geometry due to the Blur being the XC version with 100mm of rear-wheel travel and the wilder being the TR version which thanks to a different shock swing link has 115mm of travel. The different shock linkage also rotates the front triangle backwards slackening off the frame geometry a degree or so between the XC and TR versions.

The Blur has a reach of 450mm, effective top tube length comes in at 593mm, a head tube angle of 68.3 degrees and a seat tube angle of 76.3 degrees. The bottom bracket sits a middle of the road 330mm from the ground to ensure you can pedal whenever you need to whilst maintaining composure on descents. Overall the geometry is pure modern XC; meaning it also handily lends itself towards some pretty tasty handling on most trails this side of an enduro race. Well, at least until things get steep and you can’t get the saddle far enough out of the way, more on this later.

Meanwhile, the Wilder has a reach of 438mm, effective top tube length comes in at 597mm, a head tube angle of 67.1 degrees and a seat tube angle of 75 degrees. The bottom bracket on the Wilder is 10mm higher than the Blur at 340mm due to the extra travel available front and rear. The Wilder geometry leans a little more towards the light trail riding end of the spectrum as you’d expect. The downside of the TR version having the same front triangle as the XC version is that the TR’s slackness comes with side effects of shorter (reach) and higher (bb) rather than the preferred longer and lower.

As things get faster and rougher you do start to notice various angles of flex from both the Blur and the Wilder, mainly from the back end of the bike. The reality is that Santa Cruz have managed to achieve a full bike weight of only 10.4kg in this spec and a low frame weight mean less carbon and consequently more flex!

Suspension

Attached via the Blur’s headtube is a Rockshox Sid SL Ultimate in 100mm guise with a twist grip bar mounted lockout. At the back end of the bike is the corresponding Sid Luxe Ultimate shock, residing just below the top tube also providing 100mm of wheel travel. The shock is also attached to the same twist grip lockout. One hundred millimetres of wheel travel really isn’t much if you’re used to modern enduro bike wheel travel. However, by the wonders of modern suspension design and a huge credit to air spring and damper technology you can now get some pretty serious performance from 100mm. The Blur, with its chrome stickered Rockshox, doesn’t disappoint here. Set up relatively firm with 20% sag front and rear and relatively quick rebound damping (compression adjustment is limited to the lockout unfortunately) the Blur tracks rough ground impeccably. For churning a big gear over choppy terrain it’s simply brilliant. 

Having the firm setup in terms of sag meant that there was enough positive travel left for some reasonably big hits, only bottoming out on a few exuberant gas-to-flat moments off drops in my piloting. As a result of this small bump sensitivity the climbing and braking traction is brilliant. My only gripe would be that the new ‘superlight’ suspension design with reduced anti-squat does seem to bob more than you’d expect as the cost of the marvellous traction.

How does the Juliana Wilder compare in the suspension stakes? Well, with +15mm of travel out back and +20mm up front, this time supplied in the form of Fox factory equipment, the wilder is substantially plusher with some real quality damping. The Fox 34 step cast is an excellent fork. With a more advanced damper than the Sid on the Blur it offers low-speed compression adjustment as well as 3-stage lockout lever on top of the right fork leg. Truth being told once you have the damping set where you want it, there’s not much need for the lockout lever but its nice to have in case your marathon XC ride involves some steep tarmac.

The same can be said for the Fox DPS rear shock. Both end of this bike were set up a little softer than the Blur and as a result of the softer setup, better damping and more travel the Wilder was suitably more composed on a fast descent. Did it affect the pedalling performance with the low-anti-squat mildly bob-happy rear end of the bike? No, not really. The damping quality Fox offers and how its tuned for this suspension design mean there really are no drawbacks to the extra travel TR version. Which I suppose is lucky seeing as Juliana only offer the Wilder in TR spec where you can buy XC or TR spec on a Blur.

Cockpit

The cockpit on both bikes was identical with Santa Cruz’ own flat carbon XC bar at 760mm width, which is pretty much spot on for an XC race machine with trail riding aspirations. The totally flat bar looks great and with 9 degrees of back-sweep was comfortable for some seriously long days out. The 60mm Syntace stem however, was a total nightmare. It came loose repeatedly resulting in the headset knocking wildly over roots and resulting in having to slightly over-torque the steerer clamp bolts to slow this process down. This was more of an issue on the Blur than the Wilder; possibly related to the quality of the fork…? That’s pure speculation mind you.

The full XC Blur we have here is fitted with RockShox’ twist grip lockout, luckily the newer standard that defaults to open not locked. Being honest the lockout was a bit of a toy when climbing steep tarmac but that’s basically it. Locking out the suspension reduces traction and more importantly comfort even on a mostly smooth gravel road. The supple suspension is too good to turn off. Okay, I didn’t race any balls-to-the-wall short track XC races where I may have wanted to lock out and sprint up a climb or off the start line, but even then, I’m pretty sure I’d have had the lockout open for traction!

The Juliana Wilder on the other hand, does without the mostly redundant lockout and instead has a free choice of grips when not constrained to those that match the twist grip. So, in the spirit of World Cup XC racing they’ve fitted ESI foam grips. My golly, these are comfy. There were doubts on durability and whether they’d rotate when wet but none of it came to be true. They were just soft and comfortable the whole time.

Groupset

This is my first experience of SRAM’s XO AXS drivetrain on a mountain bike and being totally honest its game changingly good (both the Blur and Wilder have identical drivetrain in this spec). The crisp ‘buzz-buzz’ of shift in either direction on the cassette resulted in ultimate confidence no matter what the conditions. The shifting really was perfect every single time. The performance advantage to this in a race situation is that you know you can wazz down a gear or three instantly if a feature or nasty climb jumps out at you!

The 10-50 cassette is nicely spaced and a machining work of art. The 175mm GX carbon cranks are a spec blunder on a medium size frame in my opinion. Maths and gearing prove that longer cranks don’t offer a torque advantage so I’d like to see nothing longer than a 170mm. Likewise the 34t chainring is a little ambitious if you live anywhere with steep climbs and prefer the spin to win method.

The SRAM Level TLM twin-piston brakes were entirely adequate but nothing special in terms of braking performance. They were consistent in their responses but there were a few times where I really wanted to slow down a bit quicker and would’ve enjoyed some beefier 4-pot brakes.

Saddle & seatpost

The Blur’s Fox Transfer SL seatpost in 100mm Performance Elite flavour was my least favourite part of the build and probably the one that had the biggest limiting factor on the capabilities of the Blur. The Transfer SL is ‘super-light’ and that means it only has 100mm of travel and can only be used fully up or fully down, there’s no middle ground. The 100m drop is wholly insufficient, even on the MTB endurance courses and trails that I rode it on. Steeps and jumps with insufficient bum-saddle clearance are often bum clenching. When you consider the Blur flies rather well I’d much rather have a proper 150mm seatpost on here.

In fully extended mode the Transfer SL has the most play of any dropper seat post I’ve used, it rocks and rolls and rotates in every direction and you can feel it when riding. My final moan about the seatpost is that it makes a horrible mechanically unsympathetic bang when it gets the top, something you can’t avoid by allowing it to rise slowly as it won’t lock into the up position.

The Juliana Wilder on the other hand comes with, you guessed it, a proper 150mm Reverb. I know some of you will be screaming that I consider 150mm sufficient but for the bike type and frame size its really fine. You’ll also be screaming about the reliability of the Reverb but when they work they’re creamy smooth and the lever action is light in a way I’ve yet to feel with a cable operated dropper. Time will tell on the reliability front but for now the Reverb is ace and puts the Wilder another step ahead of the Blur.

Wheels & tyres

The ever-classy Santa Cruz Reserve rims, in 28mm wide XC form here, are shod with the already discussed Maxxis Aspen 2.4 and laced into DT Swiss 350 hubs. These are a £1600 wheelset on their own which is rather a lot of money. There were some complaints about this when we did the first look. The Santa Cruz website specs Industry Nine hubs which I’m sure all would agree would be much more fitting for an eight grand bike. However, the wheels were faultless, DT 350 hubs included. 

The Reserve rims are wide enough to give a sufficiently rounded profile to the Maxxis tyres supplied on both bikes. The 2.4 Aspen’s on the Blur are Maxxis’ fastest XC summer race tyre and not in any way suited to the UK; unless you’re a true fair weather rider and wait for that one dusty day a year. I did find that day on the Blur and they were brilliant. Fast as hell but also rather grippy; totally at odds to how I feel when I look at the tread!

The Rekon race tyres on the Juliana Wilder are mildly more treaded with what you might describe as a widely spaced file tread. They’re basically as fast as the Aspen but offer that bit more control on looser surfaces. There were, however, equally terrible in the mud at Kirroughtree.

Juliana Wilder Carbon CC overall

Amanda: The Juliana Wilder made 2021 for me. That might sound extreme, but having a do-it-all bike meant that I got out on the trails more. I also entered more races than I have ever considered, loved every moment of them and found my niche. XC is not just riding far and fast – it is technically challenging and physically exhausting. When you’re hours into a race, you need a bike that will help you out, and the Wilder did just that.

Outside of racing, this highly capable bike would allow me to ride that bit further when I’m tired. It’s lightweight and really easy to ride. There is very little rolling resistance, it’s comfortable from tarmac to rock gardens, and it just makes everything that bit more fun. Lightweight bikes come at a price, so the wheelset, drivetrain and carbon frame add up to a bill far out of my price range, but if I did have the money I would spend it on this bike without hesitation. Most bike prices are impossible to justify these days, and I think that would be my excuse for owning a bike worth a small house deposit.

Santa Cruz Blur Carbon CC overall

Rhys: After the opening ten hour endurance race, many lovely long late summer XC rides we bookended the test with another endurance race, this time eight hours at Hamsterley for the inaugural Hammers 8 race. So what’s our final opinion of the ride after several months with these bikes? Well, the setting is the same but I know the Blur pretty well by this point and its safe to say we’re very good friends.

Off the line, I’m immediately clogged with other riders on a short technical climb, the Blur’s fabulous traction and quick downshifting allowing me to swerve around those already on foot. As we make it towards the longest climb of the race I’m settling into my comfortable pace. As we near the top I dash past a few riders to get some clean track in front of me for the longest descent of the course. It’s a belter for an XC course too! Fast, hard-packed and flowing, the Aspens are much more at home here than at Kirroughtree. Saddle down, elbows out, I’m playing the ‘you don’t need to brake there’ game with myself, the suspension taking the sting out of any sharp hits. There are some proper jumps which add some rear excitement to the course and test my form later in the race. The Blur is in its element, riding as fast but efficiently as possible on the descents, crossing the finish line and pacing up the climbs. It really is a fabulous machine in the right setting and one that I’ll miss racing.