Never ridden a bike with less then 90mm, due to being od an XC persuasion generally. My Patriot is the XC spec from back when they did such things (2007) and whilst it doesn’t feel stretched, I am wondering if the bike would work better with a 65 ish mm stem.

What difference does it make generally, and does being more upright on this kind of bike really hamper climbing? It has to be relatively fast all day, not a winch up type bike.

Quicker steering, I put a 50mm on my bike and kept lifting the front when I climbed, I now have a 70 which is lovely with a 720 bar, it was trial and error I got thru 3 or 4 stems before I settled on 70mm

TBH, the modern trend for short stems is really only to balance the fast that bikes are getting longer and bars wider.

If you have an existing bike that fits you, well, it fits you, and hence you don’t really need to change stems! If you fit wider bars however, then a shorter stem helps to restore your position back closer to where it was before you fitted the wider bar.

In my experience, the length of the stem doesn’t make that much difference to the turning performance of the bike (that’s more about bar width, trail and head angle tbh).

I went shorter as I kept having too much weight over the front on the downs…going OTB a no. of times.

Both bikes now run 50mm with 740/750 bars. Takes a bit of getting used to on the ups, but once mastered…it makes the downs a lot more fun (and marginally less dangerous).

In my experience, the length of the stem doesn’t make that much difference to the turning performance of the bike (that’s more about bar width, trail and head angle tbh).

my experience with shorter stems would seem to be more twitchy – harder to steer on uphill/rocky stuff – but this reads more like it nothing to do with turning and all about control having said that I wouldn’t call 65mm short

If you have an existing bike that fits you, well, it fits you

Well it’s not about fit. I could still ride a bike with 90mm or 60mm, but in a slightly different position and with different weight distribution which is what I am wondering about.