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These are the fastest downhill mountain bikes in the world
The new World Cup season is just around the corner, so will it see a new bike break into this exclusive club?
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Smell that? It smells like race season! It's nearly time to get the racers in the start hut for the opening round of the 2018 UCI World Cup in Lošinj, Croatia. But before we explode with excitement over the reams of 'new bike and new kit' posts that are heading our way, let's take a second to remind ourselves of the fastest hardware from 2017.
Racing sometimes can get a bit lost in marketing pomp and industry jargon but the competition between manufacturers is real. Racing betters the breed and the desire to have the fastest bike on earth in your catalogue is worth the R+D budget alone.
Let's check out the bikes of those who finished top of the elite men's heap in 2017:
1. YT Tues CF Pro (Aaron Gwin, USA)
Aaron Gwin's YT Tues frame
© YT Mob
The 27.5in wheeled, half carbon fibre, half alloy German thoroughbred won the UCI World Cup title last season underneath Aaron Gwin. There were battles along the way too – a rain-soaked Lourdes and a puncture in Lenzerheide to name but two. But this bike pulled off a serious comeback with wins in all four of the final points-paying sessions of the season to take the title.
2. Canyon Sender CF 9.0 Team (Troy Brosnan, Australia)
Troy Brosnan – Canyon Sender
© Nathan Hughes
Troy Brosnan made the jump to Canyon at the end of the 2016 season and it has paid dividends. Yet another 27.5in wheeled Germanic half-and-half, the Sender was a then new machine developed closely with double DH World Champ, Fabien Barel.
Brosnan was criminally overlooked by many as the title race heated up between Gwin and Greg Minnaar – watch for big things from the Aussie and his Canyon this time out.
3. Santa Cruz V-10 29er (Greg Minnaar, South Africa)
The new Santa Cruz 29er V10
© Bartek Woliński/Red Bull Content Pool
Without a shadow of a doubt the most talked-about bike of 2017 was the first 'big wheeler' to win a UCI World Cup race; the Santa Cruz V-10 29er. The V-10 is the most successful DH race bike in history and it's latest evolution was suitably cutting edge.
Greg Minnaar, who was denied the title after a heart-breaking mechanical at the final round, rode the XXL sizing which allowed for more rear wheel travel than his team-mates.
4. Specialized S-Works Demo 8 (Loïc Bruni, France)
Loïc Bruni – Specialized S-Works Demo
© Bartek Woliński
There is a train of thought that says that this is in fact the fastest bike in the world given that it won the 2017 UCI World Champs in Cairns, carrying Loïc Bruni to his second title in the process. The Frenchman got somewhat embroiled in the 29in debate at the start of the season but when all was said and done both he and Gwin proved that 27.5in was far from finished.
Bruni's Specialized Racing team use trick Öhlins suspension and is continually developing that side of things with specialist telemetry rigs.
See Bruni's World Champs winning run below:
6. Mondraker Summum Carbon (Danny Hart, Great Britain)
The Mondraker Summum in focus
© Nathan Hughes
We know, we know... Loris Vergier was fifth fastest in last year's UCI World Cup, but seeing as how we've already mentioned the Santa Cruz V-10, we thought we'd skip one to sixth in the world; the Mondraker Summum. The above bike is the 29er developmental prototype Danny Hart campaigned early in the season before making the switch back to 27.5in.
Hart is off to Madison Saracen (who have been developing a 29er version of their Myst, incidentally) so it will be interesting to see if the new team roster of Laurie Greenland, Brook Macdonald and Mike Jones will run them.
Check out a sneak peek at that new Saracen Myst 29er:
So who will finish first in 2018?!
Both the Tues and the Sender's positions at the top of the heap are notable given their relative 'newbies' to top flight UCI World Cup DH racing. The V-10 on the other hand is far from a shock.
Barring the potential sprouting of some bigger wheels, the development phase of each of the models featured looks to be fairly well set in place. However, the real threat may come from those machines piloted by riders on the up. The two main examples of this would be the Commencal of Amaury Pierron and the Intense of Jack Moir:
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