Enduro bikes slowly turning into freeride bikes?

The new GT Sanction has a 1200mm wheel base and 165/170mm of travel, the Capra has 170mm both ends and a 65 degree head angle. It seems that they’re slowly becoming sub 29lb freeride bikes?

Good/Bad? Brilliant all round bikes…. or to long/bouncy to be fun in UK enduro races and to light to be a nice stable alps bike? I think I liked it when the bikes were more on the trail bike side with more aggressive geometry.

It used to be that a Enduro bike was just an all mountain rig. But the emphasis is squarely on the downhill side of things. that sanction is really a small dh rig which uses a remote lockout so you can haul it to the top!Not a lot of use to the averagerider

Doesn’t seem much different to a freeride bike then, just lighter. Much preferred it when the “enduro” bikes were more trail focused with lower, more aggressive geometry than usual.

I don’t think the Sanction/Capra will be any better than my old 180mm SX Trail on UK tracks, despite the 5/6lb weight loss.

I thought that.

A year ago the Bronson was sooooo enduro. Now everyone wants a nomad, and the Bronson is gay.

What’s the Bronson for now?

**mountain bikers in being fickle over terminology shocker**

We’ve got a bike being described as a ‘rig’. Can we have someone say “gnar” for a full house?

Think I’d prefer the Bronson, with a works components headset to take the head angle to 66 degrees. The Nomad seems a step to far for uk riding. Even Dan Atherton prefers 150mm travel bikes, so part of me thinks the Sanction got 165 for marketing reasons.

What’s the Bronson for now?

You take it to trail centre cafes.. looks good in the bike rack. Also looks pretty cool on an Audi roof rack.

EWS rounds are all quite different but certainly bikes like the new gt seem designed for the fast alpine stuff like this weekends at vallnord, lift assisted with dh descents

Its all just marketing though so I wouldn’t worry about it

Its all good if you ask me, my enduro rig 😉 is about 5kg lighter than my freeride/ dh bike and only slightly less capable on the descents , I’ll take that if it means I can ride 50k of welsh mountains up and down !

PS lol at cloudnine

The thing is that UK Enduro courses aren’t as long as other places(only Tweedlove has achieved the technicality, albeit low speed technical as opposed to high speed rock gardens etc like in Europe) and lack the elevation/severity of other places. Bikes are designed to handle the biggest and wildest terrain their discipline presents, so an Enduro bike will always end up being built for bigger terrains and bigger markets like Europe to ensure the bike works and it is viable as a saleable product.

Here’s an idea – buy a bike with travel and geometry that suits your needs regardless of its label.

Still think the SX Trail was no better than my 150mm Mega on Alpine descents when it came to ploughing through rock gardens

Here’s an idea – buy a bike with travel and geometry that suits your needs regardless of its label.

There is that, but marketing plays a part in how strong a frame is built. There aren’t that many bikes with the combination of travel, geometry and frame strength which makes them suitable for UK enduro racing/dossing around at chicksands.

As has been mentioned, most companies are building bikes for America and mainland Europe.

Really? Spitfire/Rune/Covert/Bandit/Mega AM & TR/Rocket/Process 134 & 153/Ariel/Meta AM/Spectral/Fritz/Heckler/Bronson/Five/Alpine at the top of my head. Then again I’m not in the UK and have never attended a race there so I might be way off in terms of what you’d be looking for. 🙂 It just seems to me that segment is pretty much overflowing with good bikes with small but distinctive enough differences in travel, geo and toughness to suit a lot of riders. Again, I might be wrong. And apologies if I came off like a bit of a dick.

Funny, we were talking about this earlier. When this whole enduro thing kicked off in the UK, the big sell was that it was the sort of riding we already did, and it demanded the sort of bikes we already had. Perfect!

But now it seems like there’s a lot of work going on to change that perception, and now you should buy an enduro bike, because your bike’s wheels are the wrong size, and you probably need less chainrings, etc. Cynics might be cynical about that.

prolly to do with marketing terms. cannot blame them though, that’s life.

It foes seem to be going that way, but then again if you can build a light enough bike with that much travel that pedals well, why not? Not saying that it’s right….it’s more human nature. We want more of most things.

The slack angles and longer wheelbases do make sense though. Until last year I was still using an original SX Trail which was a great bike and was fun to ride. The Rune that replaced it isn’t a million miles away on paper (10mm more travel, similar weight etc) but the slacker head angle does make for a more confident descender which let’s face it is the fun bit. The steeper seat angle means that it climbs better than the SX did too.

The term freeride evolved though…I remember when it was used to describe what most people did, just ride around with an emphasis on fun but over the years it became more about big drops etc. So are Enduro bikes just a return to what freeride used to be?

No-one builds “freeride” bikes anymore 😀

Enduro became All Mountain, Freeride died and became Enduro. DH still sits at one end while XC then Trail still sit at the other end… unless you count Cannondale’s branding of “Over Mountain” in there somewhere… along with a dozen other daft buzzwords to sell the same bike year after year while appearing new and different

Freeride (what I thought it was)

What is freeride now?

The future of enduro definitely lies in one timed run downhill, served by an uplift. Its going to be huge.

You can’t buy a “freeride” bike. The FMB style stuff is either done on a DJ bike (more “slopestyle” events) or DH bike (more “big mountain” events). The rare time they ride a slightly shorter travel big bike it is an “Enduro” bike.

Events like Rampage are few and far between but everyone I can think of was riding a DH (race) bike. Can’t think of any bikes marketed as “Freeride” off the top of my head

i want an overdrive-freeridelight-overpark-but-underground-duel-mountain-mincing-bike please. Someone make one please i do not think there’s anything on offer.Not when I searched google anyway.

My 6 year old S-Works Enduro has a 1210mm wheelbase, a 66 degree head angle, weighs 30lb and has 170mm front/150mm rear. OK, I stuck the forks on, but maybe you’re overthinking things OP?

Just for the record – it rides like a dream 🙂

Can’t think of any bikes marketed as “Freeride” off the top of my head

Funny, I was going to link you the production page of Canyon Torque EX as an example of a freeride bike, but as of the current model year it’s apparently a “super-enduro” (albeit with “freeride” still buried somewhere deep in the description). 🙂

YT Industries still has a couple of freeride bikes though but yeah, exception to the rule I guess.

I suppose it really should all be a balance thing if the bikes are truly aimed at competitive Enduro riders (are they really though?) then the whole efficient pedaling climbing angle should come into the equation…

I guess more travel doesn’t strictly exclude efficient climbing, but its sort of intuitive for many of us that more bounce, makes for a shitter on the ups and will the payback be there on the way back down?

If 20 odd years of DH bikes have taught anyone anything about bike design its probably that the way a bike handles any given track is not simply about how boingy it is…
The number of millimetres the wheels move up and down is a nice little metric for the marketeers to segment bikes by, but I think riders have become a shade more savvy, that people look at the angles and wheelbase rather than the “headline” numbers and consider what those might actually mean in use, suggests the marketing gibbons might have to do a shade more than up the travel figures to get buyer’s attention…

Ots also worth considering that alot of what is sold as “Enduro” kit isn’t necessarily designed with the UK take on Enduro/Gravity Enduro in mind… We are a peculiar little island prone to doing things a bit differently…

It’s not just the UK that is particular in what it calls Enduro, the EWS stages seem to vary from race to race and extreme to extreme with 17min stages in the Alps this weekend to shorter stuff elsewhere.
The Santa Cruz guys seem to show that in Enduro simply because they seem to travel with an entire Fleet/Quiver/Stable/Van Full of options to all these races pulling out LT29’rs bronsons and nomads depending on how they feel, Enduro still doesn’t have a boundary which is great as racing a broad spectrum means you have to be even better to win.

The DH world always throws up some surprises, watching won’t back down reminded me of all the fuss the Spec guys made about Stromlo and brought SX trails because shorter travel trail bikes made more sense and other running superlight air setups only for the old fella on the 10″ DH bike to romp home for the win. Graves throwing down the run on the 26″ trail bike (or probably what people are calling Freeride here) in the Worlds and again to be beaten by the 26″ 10″ travel DH bike.

Making use of the travel and finding a way to let you pedal it has always been the holy grail of Full Sus, look at Kona and the magic link ideas, 2 stage with the 2 shocks, funky shock tunes and all that stuff just to make sure you can take the hits and the pedal out of it.

“Freeride” as a concept of gravity fed big jumps & drops is great if your into it and lets people sacrifice weight and pedalling for a more stable & stronger bike that sucks up the bad landings and all that. It’s just a very limited space in the market these days. You could push the bigger travel “enduro” bikes up there, they will take the big hits and all that just set all the suspension to open, but if you want to take hit after hit then out go the nice light wheels and the nice finishing kit and in comes the heavy duty stuff which hinders the pedalling.

My 6 year old cannondale prophet is according to strava faster than my 29er uphill and my mega am downhill. I would be interested to know just how knarly enduro is as if there is a bit of uphill and not many rock gardens the prophet seems to be faster. The tank like mega starts shining when you need its slack angles.

Oh for goodness sake, svalgis had it right, buy a bike and ride it. Regardless of the marketing and words attached to these machines we get so passionate about they are just wheels and gears and they rely on our ability and fitness. Just be thankful that we have the time, money, health and freedom to ride a bike.
My bike has 200mm travel front and rear and weighs 38 lbs ish. I rode it to the finish of the dyfi this year and wasn’t last, not bad for a 17 stone middle aged bloke who’s had cancer twice. The bike was superb and the feeling of achievement incredible.
Just ride your bikes people and stop worrying about unnecessary marketing sh1te.

Moar travel is faster, right?

I think these kind of bikes are ideal if you live in the mountains, dont own a DH bike, but still want to get awesome, ie, not your general MTB market in the UK.

These kind of bikes aren’t very freeride, no? –

http://www.pinkbike.com/video/259790/

Maybe these sort of bikes simply don’t have enough travel mind, was forgetting for a moment that if you’re tackling anything bigger than curb height atleast 180mm of travel is very necessary.

These kind of bike now are so stable, slack and strong whilst still being light, they are dh bikes that pedal more favourably than a dh bike.

Same shit, new marketing.

The Enduro races are won on the downhills, so naturally we’re ending up again with bikes that are winch up, bomb down, if this is what you enjoy then buy one of the new ‘Enduro specific’ (loler) bikes, for me I’ll stick with something that’s fun to ride for as much of the time I’m on the thing as possible. I can’t imagine that I’d do with an extra 50mm of travel over what my blur has.

I think its terrible, affordable lightweight bikes that are tolerable to pedal up a mountain and a riot coming down. Why did it all have to change?! It was all so simple and then people started thinking and having ideas on how to make things better and it will only end in tears.



Where will it all end?

Don’t agree at all. I’m riding the new Orbea Rallon having changed from a Cove GSpot as my last bike I actually owned. The Rallon is low, really low and I find it climbs really well. It’s efficient. In the super right stuff you feel the length a bit but it is so low and stable that you can really push it through the corners. Very different from the “freeride” bikes I have tried. The GSpot is great in a winch up and fly down way and I still love riding it. The Rallon can be pedaled up and along all day and is fantastic for that. Downhill it’s faster than the big “freeride” bike too. The whole travel thing is a fraction of the story, the Rallon has 10mm more than the cove but they couldn’t be more different! Ignore the labels, enduro is different things to different people, but the bikes nowadays are amazing and we should all be happy about that!

More to the point when are going to get proper paint jobs like the ones in tomaso’s post back?

The Orbea is a fair bit shorter in the top tube and the wheel base, the geometry can also be set steeper than the YT or the GT. It also has less travel front and rear and shorter chainstays than either of the other two bikes (great for UK riding not so great for Alipine downhills) – it’s almost perfect. The Orbea with 150 at the rear would be perfect.

Basically IMO I think that Enduro is evolving into DH lite, or a downhill feeder categatory like the Moto 2 races in Moto GP. With slightly smaller jumps and lower speeds due to the reduced travel, not a sport that is supposed to mimick what most riders do…ie ride trails.

[/quote]Spitfire

Yes

Rune/

Too heavy.

Covert

To steep.

Mega AM

Bordering on being to much bike.
TR

Too short in the TT.

Process 134 & 153

Maybe

Ariel

Yes

Bronson

Yes

Five/Alpine

Ewww

doug, old Gspot??? As much fun bike as they are (I to have one), they are a pig for riding a round without braking your back. They are good in the old sense of freeride (playing in the trees, some north shore stuff, super techy tight twisty shit), but on the downs, the rear end chatters like mad! Compare it to my new Spitty, less travel, but OH SO DIFFERENT design, and the Spitty wins on the typical open space “Enduro” style trails (i.e. what we’ve all been building and riding for the last 15 years). However, the the longer slacker bikes are hard work on really twisty stuff IHMO, though maybe that’s me not having 100% got used to the new bike..?

Basically IMO I think that Enduro is evolving into DH lite, or a downhill feeder categatory like the Moto 2 races in Moto GP. With slightly smaller jumps and lower speeds due to the reduced travel, not a sport that is supposed to mimick what most riders do…ie ride trails

so why are 2 former multiple world DH champs riding it, one 10 time, one double? Plus a lot of other DHers? Can’t see Valentino Rossi lining up in moto 2 somehow…

You can’t buy a “freeride” bike.

4 realz?

http://www.konaworld.com/entourage.cfm

http://www.canyon.com/_en/mountainbikes/bike.html?b=3272#tab-reiter2

http://www.yt-industries.com/shop/en/Bikes/Gravity/Noton-2.0-Comp

http://www.commencal-store.co.uk/PBSCProduct.asp?ItmID=12501812

etc

so why are 2 former multiple world DH champs riding it, one 10 time, one double? Plus a lot of other DHers? Can’t see Valentino Rossi lining up in moto 2 somehow

Err…..because Rossi made tens of millions whilst old dogs like Nico have to make a living by moving over to enduro to make themselves relevant to marketing departments.

This thread is coming across a lot like a ‘Review by Numbers’ style discussion with bikes being dismissed based on a few mm of travel here, a couple of hundred grammes there, a degree here etc.

Unless you’ve had significant ride time on all of them then making judgements is a bit meaningless, comparison by catalogue numbers will never tell you how they actually ride and as so much is in the setup and personal preference it seems a bit academic.

‘Enduro’ is the new buzz word and depending on where you’re from and what riding you do it means many different things to different people, it’s already been alluded to above but the courses vary so mcuh from location to location that it’s incredibly difficult to define, but I really don’t think it’s heading towards the ‘Freeride’ that we saw around the late 90’s early noughties, but again Freeride varied by location and disposition as much as Enduro does!

I think we will see the discipline continue to develop as it is still in early days really, personally I would like to see it move more towards the longer stages and become a proper XC/Trail/DH hybrid style event where technical riding, mixes with balls out flowy riding throwing in the occasional really tricky short ascents and tight bits as well, not so much ‘DHlite’ as ‘SuperXC’, that’s where the interesting battles will develop when courses mix and match to challenge different skillsets.

As with all sports as they develop the gap between the pure race machines and the everyday bikes will widen, sure we’ll still see non-racers buying bikes designed for racing and it will lead the marketing but the best thing to come out of it is that actual trail bikes are just getting better and better, but

“Hey buy our mid-travel, mid-weight, mid-angled bike for normal riding!”

just doesn’t have the same ring to it so the manufacturers will always shout about the new and exciting extremes as it sells bikes and pulls at the aspirational heartsrings of a lot of riders, whatever their discipline may be.

Good post. That’s how I’d like to see the races go and that’s what I would enjoy racing at an amateur level.

Can’t take too many risks because of work these days, can’t really justify doing big gap jumps etc.

Err…..because Rossi made tens of millions whilst old dogs like Nico have to make a living by moving over to enduro to make themselves relevant to marketing departments.

Ha, I doubt Nico is short of money, being the most winningest DH rider of all time in an era when they got paid a lot of money to race DH.

Clearly not Rossi amounts of money, but he’s a clever guy, and if a party boy like Gracia had his head screwed on enough not to spunk all his cash, I’m sure Nico didn’t have a secret coke & bookers fetish that bled him dry…