In 2020 we relaunched our podcast. Relaunched, because according to the Singletrack Magazine Wikipedia entry we were the first mountain bike media to have a podcast way back when podcasts were first a thing in the early noughties. Back then our podcasts were simply recordings of our random chats in…

With millions of readers every month, there are lots of different paths to reading an article on Singletrack. Maybe you come straight to the homepage every morning over your coffee, or maybe you click through from Facebook or Twitter. Perhaps a friend shared a post with you, or a link…

It’s been a pants year for a lot of reasons, but we’ve still managed to test some great bikes. Here are our top 10 bike reviews of 2020. Below are the 10 most read mountain bike reviews of 2020. If you’re after eMTB reviews, we’ll have a separate post listing…

What did you watch on our YouTube channel this year? There are plenty of ‘old favourites’ that you keep viewing, plus new videos that caught your attention too. Here’s the Top 10 of most watched Singletrack videos this year. 1. Mountain Biking – The Untold British Story You love it,…

Ladies and gentlemen, please allow myself to introduce… my new Deviate Highlander long term test bike. Or at least it will be once I’ve cut it down from the ceiling and put it all together. For now, let’s just take a moment to appreciate the work that went into the…

The Stories Behind Some of the Bike Industry’s Most Well-Known Monikers

Our super-sleuth, investigative reporter, Tim Newcomb has been digging around to find exactly what’s in that company name. Some are obvious, but some are more than obscure!

For the most part, you can forget about focus groups and market research when it came time for some of the bike industry’s most well-known companies to settle on a name. Instead, you’ll find plenty of acronym figuring, location loving, pun hunting and, in some cases, quick thinking gave your favorite companies the name you splash across your bike. And your body. 

Salsa Cycles

Ross Shafer didn’t want to name his bike company after himself, so he named it after his lunch. A typical lunch for the hot pepper nut was a jar of Pace Picante sauce dumped into cottage cheese with a bag of chips. Shafer says he wanted a name that offered “something hot” and “something spicy.” He came up with Salsa. 

Cannondale 

Peter Meyers needed to order a phone line for a new bike company in Connecticut in 1971 so he went to the nearby Cannondale Metro North train station to use a pay phone. When asked how the new phone line should be listed, Meyers froze a little and responded with Cannondale, borrowing the name of the station. The name stuck and Cannondale has lived on for decades. 

Winter’s dark nights, cold weather and dirty trails take their toll on your motivation but Marine Cabirou has a few tips to keep on riding. Sometimes it is super hard to train when the weather is not nice, I especially find it difficult when I have a 2-3 hour road…

Racer and team manager Jack Reading explains why he thinks British Cycling is failing its downhill athletes. This article will be accessible by Free Members on the 23rd November. It will be accessible to non-members on the 25th November. My name is Jack Reading, and I have been racing World…