xc kit isn’t very exciting.
Oh I think it can be… Though, it seems like a lot of mags focus on racy xc stuff, at the expense of sensible everyday xc stuff, the bikes are often objects of desire, the shoes disco slippers etc. Which is aspirational but for most people makes not much sense.
But I do reckon the whole 650b thing combined with all this enduro racing malarkey has brought about a ton of interesting changes and new bikes or significant reinventions for enduro/am bikes, along with 1×10, excellent new forks etc… Lots of shiny to writ about, and a lot of it sensibly priced but still cool. And at the same time there’s still a bunch of new 29ers too, doing things that til lately people thought 29ers sucked at. It’s an interesting time.
Whereas mostly it’s stagnated XC bikes with what amounts to rehashes of the same kit, and it’s pretty dubious whether that’s actually making better bikes.
All the R&D in this year’s Anthem X, firnstance, was about making the wheels smaller. They didn’t even have time to invent any new bullshit standards! How do you write 2 pages about that? “Anthem X- less fit for purpose than the old one, otherwise much the same”
Or: “Rockshox Sid- it’s the same as what you already have but slightly bigger” vs “Rockshox Pike- it’s a totally new kickass thing”