Join us for an inside look at freeride mountain bike star Brandon Semenuk and his crew as we follow them on the road from World Tour Competitions to the journey back home in the coastal mountains of Canada.

In this premiere episode we check out the ultimate MTB house fully decked out with dirt jumps, slopestyle, trails, air bags, and a bear?! Lean back and enjoy some serious laughs, adventure, and of course some epic freeride mountain biking.

Specialized (and Victor Lucas) have just posted up a video showcasing the La Bresse XCO course that claimed both Rosara and Karen in the weekend. This clip gives us a pretty damn good look at the just how hard the course was, and in my view how all XC courses should be. It looked like a fun track but there is no way in hell I’d want to ride it with my seat up my arse and on 680 bars with 80mm of travel!!!

RockShox have just released this little video that gives an insight into what goes down when they are custom tuning a shock for a specific bike in a company’s range (in this case Rocky Mountain).

One year ago I shattered my leg. The last twelve months have been hard work but I feel like it’s finally starting to pay off. I’m back on my bike having fun and I’m loving it…

How would you feel if your summer was taken away from you?

Fascinated by the emotions that someone would experience having their main focus for the summer suddenly ripped away from them, Dan Barham will spend the next five months following various riders, who for one reason or another, have had the rug pulled out from under them.

The mini-film will follow several riders who had spent the winter training, planning, and preparing for summer, but as the summer just got into swing found themselves crippled and lame, throwing all that hard work away.

The full project will be released in October 2012. Between now and then Dan Barham will be attempting to capture the kaleidoscope of emotions, what adversities exist and how they’re overcome.

Not everything in the world of biking is sunshine and lollipops. Too often the golden egg at the end of the yellow brick road is shown at the expense of the effort it took to get there. But what about the warts, the failure, the seemingly unsurmountable challenges? Behind every rider there lies a world of anguish and pain, tests and strains, and summons to fail.

This project is not intended to celebrate the dark side of biking but rather pull into focus the motivation for doing it in the first place. We only know what light is with understanding the dark.

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danbarham.com
twitter.com/danbarham
facebook.com/DanBarhamPhotography

Local knowledge was obviously helpful at La Bresse and it turns out that winner Julien Absalon's brother Remy (enduro legend) helped design the super technical course. I think if leaders are crashing in World Cup XC races then something finally is right in the world of cross-country! Photo: Colin Meagher via Mountainbike.com

A perilous course proved the undoing of much of the field including New Zealand’s Karen Hanlen in the fourth round of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in France today.

The Whakatane rider dropped out on the second of six laps in a race that claimed a significant number in the field with only half the field finishing on the same lap as the winner as 20,000 fans thronged to La Bresse in the Alsace region today.

Hanlen was chasing Olympic qualification in the final race to earn points for London, after rival Rosara Joseph crashed and broke her wrist during practice.

After starting from 14th the National Champion dropped back to 58th by the end of the first lap and was in some difficulties before being unable to continue.

It is a serious blow for both Hanlen and Joseph who were chasing a high placing to support their Olympic bids. Hanlen started the World Cup campaign with an eighth placing to Joseph’s 11th in South Africa and 18th against 38th in Belgium before a 26th in the Czech Republic where the Beijing Olympian finished 22nd.

New Zealand is expected to earn a single elite women’s spot for London when quotas are finalised by the UCI.

Experience and patience proved the key at La Bresse with legendary Norwegian Rita-Gunn Dahle claimed her first World Cup victory in four years.

It proved a double success for mountain bike legends with double Olympic gold medallist Julien Absalon, who lives nearby, winning the men’s honours.

Dahle, the 39 year old Athens Olympic gold medallist and four time World Champion, has had a break from the sport after becoming a mother. She was back in fourth until leader Katherine Pendrell (CAN) crashed on the demanding downhill with series leader Julie Bresset (FRA) falling while trying to avoid her.

Katerina Nash (CZE) took control from Dahle before she fell twice on the final descent to allow the Norwegian through for the victory.

“It’s unbelievable,” said Dahle. “I am first of all a mum. So I can’t believe it. I was focussing on not going over my limit. I thought she might be over her limit and she was. I did a very good race on this course which was tough up and tough down.”

The shining light for New Zealand at La Bresse was another outstanding ride by Samara Sheppard who was third in the under-23 race on Saturday following her fourth placing in the last round as she moved to eighth on the overall classification after four rounds.

The cross-country battle moves to North America for rounds in Canada and USA in late June, while the downhillers are back in action with the World Cup at Val di Sole in Italy in two weeks.

Results, UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Cross-Country:

Elite women: Gunn-Rita Dahle (NOR) 1:39.57, 1; Katerina Nash (CZE) at 16 sec, 2; Julie Bresset (FRA) at 55s, 3; Catharine Pendrel (CAN) at 1:12, 4. Also: Karen Hanlen (NZL) dnf.

Elite men: Julien Absalon (FRA) 1:37.33, 1; Jaroslav Kulhavy (CZE)at 7 sec, 2, Ralph Naef (SUI) at 40s, 3.

Samara in Action at Champery Photo Gary Perkin

New Zealand mountain biker Samara Sheppard produced a remarkable charge on the final lap to earn a podium finish in the fourth round of the UCI World Cup in France on Saturday (NZ time).

The 22 year old was still in fifth place halfway through the final lap of four of the women’s under-23 race at La Bresse before producing a withering burst to pip South Africa’s Candice Neethling on the line for third.

It is the first World Cup under-23 podium placing for Sheppard, who is racing for the Swiss-based Wheeler IXS team this year. It follows her outstanding fourth placing in last week’s World Cup round in the Czech Republic.

Sheppard, the Rotorua-based Wellington rider, made a fast start in today’s race, to be second after the starting loop on a challenging course at La Bresse, a town in the Alsace region near the German border.

She slipped back to fourth on lap one and by lap two was fifth, nearly five minutes behind the leader, Swiss teammate Jolanda Neff who won the last round.

The New Zealander was still fifth and 44 seconds behind South Africa’s Candice Neethling in fourth at the start of the final lap but by the halfway point she had reduced the gap to 18 seconds.

Neff struck difficulties on the final lap and failed to finish which presented Ukraine’s Yana Belomoyna with the victory and elevated Sheppard to fourth. The Kiwi flew down the final descent to pip Neethling in the dash to the line to claim third place.

Sheppard now has a break for a month until her next race, with her performances over the last two weeks cementing her qualification for September’s World Championships.

Meanwhile the Rotorua pair of Dirk Peters and Sam Shaw will contest the men’s under-23 race later in the day while Whakatane’s Karen Hanlen is the only Kiwi racing in the elite women’s race on Monday (NZ time) after Rosara Joseph broke her wrist in practice.

Results, UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, La Bresse, France:

Under-23 women:
Yana Belomayna (UKR) 1:23.33, 1; Rebecca Henderson (AUS) at 1:37, 2; Samara Sheppard (NZL) at 2:21, 3; Candice Neethling (ZAF) at 2:22, 4.

Now, I’m not saying the new Saint groupset isn’t good, but this video is kinda funny. Shimano wanted to capture the first impressions of its SPONSORED teams at Sea Otter. No one got preferential treatment; Shimano delivered boxes of goodness to Yeti, Santa Cruz and Trek and filmed their reactions, but really when the guy from Shimano is standing there with a video camera you’re not going to say it sucks are you?

If the world of mountain bike websites were like the world of Thomas the Tank Engine, Pink Bike would be Gordon (scroll down to the persona bit) but it seems of late NSMB has taken the title of Thomas, the little website that could. If you don’t visit NSMB daily then you need to start; they are hands down creating some of the best original content on the web at the moment. Matt Dennison and Dan Barham’s videos are top knotch and Seb, Cam and Morgan’s editorials again are fresh and creative. On top of all that it’s not a bad site to look at. So after you’ve checked out Spoke in the morning I suggest you mosey over to NSMB. Why you could even bookmark it.

Damian Stones and Reon Boe spent a week in sunny Rarangi (the first left turn out of Picton) not long ago and banged out this damn sweet looking pump track. I can’t think of a better place than Rarangi to build a pump track; after three hours on the ferry the this little gem will be a welcome respite, and if you know what’s up you’ll know that the Whites Bay loop starts just over the hill! Banging!

We have a secondary school student doing work experience for us at the moment. Yesterday I had a bit of a brainwave when trying to think of things for him to do and came up with the idea of finally putting all the past Spoke reviews on the web. As of a few minutes ago he’s done it. Everything we’ve reviewed from before issue 30 to issue 45 is now in the review section of the site. To view them all you’ll have to head back a few pages, but from now on as soon as the mags come off the shelves the reviews will be going online.

All our reviews and new product features can be found here.

When Emma (Spoke founder and its founding designer) and I went to the Queenstown Bike Festival a few weeks back we opted not to take a bike for her as the Foes distributor had mentioned having a medium bike available. He didn’t say what it would be but when he showed up with it I didn’t even realise it existed. Obviously I do now. Emma’s initial rides were positive; it’s a bit more bike than she’s used to but was definitely fun to pedal. She only spent a couple of days with the bike, but now it’s back for a bit more of a going over by regular reviewer Mark Dangerfield.

I have to start by saying that we think it has to be the best looking Foes ever. The nice hydroformed down tube and the monocoque top tube work well together and thankfully there are no embossed flames.

So the major difference from most other Foes bikes is this thing is actually designed around a Fox RP23 and not a Curnutt. Foes have still managed to design the 5.25″/5.75″ travel bike around a 2.3:1 ratio providing a nice easily-tuneable ride. Like a bunch of trail bikes coming out at the moment the Shaver features adjustable travel, which is changed by a simple movement of the lower shock mount and the whole platform is designed around a simple link actuated single pivot. According to the boys at Blue Shark (the New Zealand distributor) it has much better small bump compliance than its big brother the FXR.

Here’s a look at the non-drive side of the business end of the Shaver.

It wouldn’t be a trail bike without a 12mm rear axle would it? The Shaver employs the Shimano 12mm axle if you were wondering.

Sun Ringle’s 1555gram SRD wheel set looks pretty burly and it’s one of the more affordable carbon options out there, so we’ll be bringing you a separate review of these guys as well as the new dual compound Intense 2.35 Invader tyres.

It couldn’t really get any better could it, Steve Peat killing it on a Tallboy with Isle of Man legend Guy Martin in tow.

I’ve been waiting for this video for a while now. It’s the video of the Easton trip that Spoke guided and it’s pretty fricken choice (the Coastal Crew put it together!). You’ll be able to read about it in issue 47 of Spoke due mid June. Vital also have a slide show up here (with me sounding extra lame).

Nico somewhere in Craigieburn forest. So damn fast!

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