did you use it much with a rack and were you carrying much weight?
Did a month touring Portugal and Spain.
We were travelling pretty light, two panniers taped together carrying the heaviest and non-hand luggage-able items were just over half the checked in bag allowance for easyjet (i’ve a crap memory for numbers).
There were a couple of evenings that i put a 5L bottle on top of the rack or the run from supermarket to campsite so my guess is that’s what did it, although I didn’t notice it when stripping down rebuilding or cleaning twice. It was the third time of cleaning when I was back I noticed.
I’m chalking it down as an expensive fork and a wall hanging 😀
I wouldn’t worry about it; it is a really nice bike to ride (have been doing some off-roading on it too.
I’d be interested to compare our comparisons of the two bikes when we’ve ridden the new ones a bit.