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Following on from my trip down nostalgia lane on the best 26inch hardtail topic I got thinking about how much impact the bike has compared to the rider.
With my main bike I jumped from a 2012 to 2021 model. I'm a better rider now and the new bike is objectively better but I don't there's anything I'd ride now that I couldn't do on my old bike.
That being said maybe you could argue that I wouldn't have pushed myself as much on the older bike that feels short, steep and scary compared to the modern one.
I'm also sure that a top level rider could ride anything I consider as difficult on any old bike and still be way faster than me.
I've waffled on enough, my question is how much is the rider and how much the bike?
I'm going with 20% bike 80% rider.
In the days when I rode motorcycle enduros, I had a mate who could ride the wheels off me on a shagged out old trailbike with bald tyres whilst I was on a new bike with proper tyres. It's mainly the rider!
Just look at what the likes of Sam Pilgrim can do on any old piece of shit for the answer.
Better bikes don't make you a better rider they just allow you to get away with more.
I rode ft William world cup track on my cove stiffee. I say rode, mostly pooped my pants until I summoned the courage to try each bit. Took me 45min I think.
I think my best time on a 26" dh bike was about 10 min.
I very much doubt I'd be faster on my current bike.
Top of aline in whistler.
2015 on 26" dh bike.
2019 on 29" geometron.
Probably learning how to jumps had more impact than anything else.
My best time puts me 4100/11500. So distinctly mid pack. I spent a lot of time working up to Whistler both times
Whatch Blake from GCN doing a jump line on a gravel bike and then tell us about much travel you need and head angles. Jump to 4:20
Not that I’m suggesting people can’t have the bikes they want
With the trend for off piste tracks getting steeper and steeper, I'm finding I'm going down stuff that I wouldn't have contempleted 10-20 years ago (52 now). I still won't do a lot of the stuff the younger generation are riding down with apparent ease though. Some of that could be experience, dunno, pretty sure I haven't got the stones I had, say around the middle of my MTB lifespan, maybe I've just learned that a lot (some) of the scary stuff is actually rideable by mortals?
But - the bike definitely plays a big part for me. Rolling into a steep section on the 29" Big Al is far less daunting than on the 26" Shan - probably would have bottled it on the Shan a few months ago. Likewise, having a 29" front end (was 27.5) on the Kenevo (and a longer dropper) than this time last year sees me crapping out a lot less often
My Hello Dave was bought specifically to allow me to ride steeper trails, I've still never been tipped over the bars on that bike, this has happened several times on other bikes. I'm a more xc rider but wanted to ride more of these new fangled enduro trails but got the fright of my life when I rode some on my Scalpel SE (2018, 120mm full sus 29er). With the Dave, I have ridden stuff that genuinely would be impossible for me to ride on any other bike I've owned.
It is true though, that once you know you can ride something comfortably on a burly bike, you will find that you can ride it on more xc bike. Much easier than starting on the xc bike in the first place.
I'm distinctly average though, although I can go pretty quick downhill at times, I think this is a lack of fear instead of genuine skill. So maybe different for the talented riders out there.
It’s at least 90% rider.
But old bikes are still crap compared to new ones.
All day.
Just before Xmas i was beaten in a DH race by a lad dressed in a Santa outfit on a 20" with dangling things on the bars... His bike was his cousins who was <10 years old. So we can either work out, he's amazing, i'm rubbish, or the bike doesn't matter. 🙂
When it was summer last year my lad was out on a kids bike, everything he hit i had to hit on my grown up bike... i failed on a few. Again this was a 20" wheel bike and no brakes 😀
When I see some of the original freeride videos where people are riding North Shore with 100mm forks and 120mm stems, I am reminded that it definitely is the rider.
+1 it’s the rider.
i rode down stuff that was considered steep (or RAD) in the 80s/90s on bikes that were barely any more than a road bike with flat bars and knobbly tires.
No way would I do that now, on bikes that are better in every way.
It’s the rider.
A super skilled rider can make rubbish kit work for them. They'll still not be a as fast as they would have been on a better bike, but they can make a mere mortal look bad.
An average rider can get a lot of extra confidence from a good modern bike. With that confidence come the capacity to explore new things and have more smiles. Does there need to be more to it than that?
Almost all the rider, something like 99%
A few years back Steve Pete did timed runs of plenty on his current dh bike and something from the early 00s. Despite the latter being completely unfamiliar to him and 15+ years of tech behind, there was a couple of seconds in it max
Slack head angles can give average riders confidence, they don't make good riders any faster
It was actually his own V10 race bike from 2006, not some random junker from eBay.
Despite the latter being completely unfamiliar to him and 15+ years of tech behind, there was a couple of seconds in it max
which is a huge amount in DH racing and the difference between qualifying or not.. A couple of seconds may not mean much to most of us, but at a certain level it's HUGE.
It is, and I'm not suggesting anyone takes their 15 year old world cup bike to try and qually on, but a chunk of that gap would be recovered with more practice.
Some tech advances are pretty obvious in performance (dropper post, 1x), the rest are mostly marketing imo. There's a reason "advances" are rarely quantified.
It is almost all the rider but... as mentioned the right bike can also improve the rider to the point where they're confident/skilled enough to ride better and on more technical trails on a "worse" bike as a result.
I noticed a massive jump in confidence and skill (mostly the former) when I got my Cotic Jeht, and now when I ride my Hardtail/Gravel Bike I'll happily ride on some terrain that I'd have struggled with before on my old full-suspension.
I've been mulling this over and thinking that maybe rider skill dictates how much impact the bike has.
For a beginner being on a crappy bike vs a modern fancy one is going to make a lot of difference.
For an elite level rider the difference will still be there but much smaller.
Depends what “it” is. If it’s going faster/bigger/radder then everyone else then yeah it’s 80/20 bike/rider. If it’s about how much fun you have, it’s 100% bike. You can go to 110% with skills courses & fitness training.