Unlike downhill and cross-country, Enduro hasn't been around in a competitive,
worldwide and professional series for the best part of three decades. Because of this,
the development of the bikes has been rapid in the few years, since the EWS's inception
in 2013. Today, we look at the trends that are driving or have driven Enduro.
Bikes in 2013 were a very different beast. Predominantly they had smaller 26-inch wheels,
but the amount of travel available was fairly similar. Typically, between 150 and 170 millimeters.
Both metal and carbon bikes have had their moment in the sun. Although I would say it
took us several seasons before anybody won an EWS with carbon wheels. Now, if we go back
to 2013, the bikes seemed like a bit of an old face and almost reassuringly familiar,
even if they were a departure from what would expect now.
If you saw the bike Jerome Clementz would plumb down God-knows-what on at warp speed,
it would look a world away to their long, low bikes that you'd get used to now. Now,
we commonly see 29-inch wheel bikes, even mullet setups, but this is a big departure
from where we were then. If the bikes from 2013 to now are so different, how did we get
here? What were the changes made along the way?
[music] Male Speaker: One of the main changes over
the last 10 years is, yes, you guessed it, the Internet's old adversary, wheel size.
In 2010, most bikes were 26 inch. There were a few XC 20 29ers, although 27.5 had yet to
truly emerge. When the EWS kicked off, there was a widely held belief that 26 was for downhill,
29 for cross-country, and 27.5 was the Goldilocks Enduro option. That idea still carried some
weight until the most recent generation of long travel 29ers came to the fall in roughly
2016 or 2017. There were outliers, of course, for example,
a certain big wheel trail bike from Norco that we've already featured, the Shinobi and
the Specialized Enduro embraced 29 as far back as 2013. The limiting factor for bigger
wheels was a combination of geometry, available componentry and, in no small part, a widely
shared belief that big wheels were just no good on demanding terrain.
Once the idea of big wheels got a foothold, it never really went away. It just gained
more and more momentum, both figuratively and, you could argue, literally. When Enduro
first launched itself as an industry buzzword, there was a clamor to try and attach a suitable
definition. The easiest way to tell what was and what wasn't an Enduro bike was to see
just how much stuff they had taped to the frame.
I would argue bikes with storage compartments, sleeked, streamlined tools, and tubeless repair
technology you can carry with you are trends that are not only affecting the outcome of
races, but also making the difference between getting home before dark or not. Which came
first, the chicken or the egg, the Enduro bike or the Enduro rider? It's these devastating,
laborious existential questions that really do keep me up at night. On a similar line
of inquiry, did progressive geometry encourage components to keep up, or vice versa? It's
a bit of both, and it really does vary from company to company. A big factor is burlier
forks. All bikes will benefit from a stiffer fork,
but bikes with a slacker head tube will do so exponentially. This means that to have
a slacker bike, they needed forks that wouldn't just wilt away under load. This also had other
consequences. Stiffer enabled them to become longer as well. I remember reading an interview,
it's one of the godfathers of Enduro, Mark Weir, who is also a real personal hero of
mine. This is what he had to say about folks in
about 2011, "I would rather have courses that make the big fork a must. It seems most Enduro
star races in the USA are still heavily weighted towards the more XC style all-mountain bike.
It's the opposite in Europe. You would snap a 32 off trying to ride a true Enduro course."
He's explaining in fairly uncertain terms that you couldn't expect to write a true Enduro
course on a smaller diameter fork. Now, this was something I didn't really understand at
the time. It was about 10 years ago, and bumping your 32 more diameter fork up to 150 was such
a popular way to make your bike more aggressive. Actually, lots of manufacturers offered it
from stock. Now, we have stiffer forks for longer travel, and the slender leg options
are the reserve of short-travel XC bikes. Bikes with 150-mil travel and a 66-degree
head angle were out there, but they just didn't have the forks to keep up. After all, it was
only a few years previous that we moved away from the 32-mil fork leg for our downhill
bikes. Whichever way you cut it, when the forks got bigger the bikes got better. That's
just the truth. Now, it seems we're on the cusp of a second wave. The 38 has been released,
and rumors swirled about a new be fearful from RockShox.
I think another thing that has driven the change in Enduro and continues to do so is
the consumers' acceptance that these aren't road bikes. These are mountain bikes. It still
goes on, but people are really beginning to accept that weight isn't everything and, to
be honest, often flies in the face of performance. Take the example of tires. They've got bigger
and wider with more protection in a deeper tread. People are happier to not only run
but mimic what the pros do. This is a far cry from the Graham hunting of even five or
six years ago. So, what has this meant? Well, it's meant
more companies have invested in heavier casings, more aggressive tread, and tubeless technology,
that means Enduro tires are better than ever. Steeper seat tubes mean that you can run an
effective higher saddle position. This has really been affected by two main advancements.
Firstly, longer drop options are now available for a remotely actuated seat posts. Secondly,
longer insertion depths into the frame mean that more riders can reap the benefits.
A Pole Stamina has an effective seat tube angle with 80 degrees, but it's also got an
extraordinarily long insertion depth of around 220 millimeters for a size large. This becomes
particularly stark when you realize the overall length of that seat tube from the bottom bracket
is 420 mil. Now, this means that more riders can enjoy getting the saddle where they need
it for their climbs without running the risk of being skewered like a kebab when it's time
to go downhill. [music]
Male Speaker: We often say the most important factor in a bike is its geometry. How has
that changed over the last decade? I thought I'd put together a few numbers and see what
they tell us. I took five bikes that have either been very popular, very successful,
or indeed both over the last 10 years and plotted their numbers. What bike of that year's
range from that brand would I race in EWS on? So, this means I often hop between wheel
sizes, but, interestingly, not always at the first opportunity. For example, The Nomad
which has always been opted as the Enduro bike in the Santa Cruz range took precedence
over the first generation Bronson and similarly Commencal had 29ers long before 2019.
What do the numbers tell us? in 2010, reach wasn't really a prevailing geometry standard,
so just getting some of these numbers was hard enough. In 2010, for a size large, there
was as much as 50-mil difference between brands for the same size. Why was this? You have
to remember that a slacker seat tube and a longer stem drastically eat into our reach
number, but we're going to come back to this later on. Head tube angle is something that
does kick out what we anticipate. A divergence towards slacker geometry and
everything is south of 66 degrees now, which is a number that used to be considered something
of a benchmark. Interestingly, you can see how brands have wrestled between larger wheels
and head angle. Does wheel size and head angle work inversely to one another? After some
deliberation between 2013 and '16, apparently not. Wheelbase, as you can see in the graph,
is the one dimension that has consistently, regardless of wheel size and without blips,
gone in the same direction longer and longer. I think, in some ways, this is one of the
really telling ones, because unlike dimensions such as seat tube angle, reach, stem length,
et cetera, there's nowhere to hide with wheelbase and there aren't really any mitigating factors.
It is what it is, and it's clear in the light of day that bikes are getting longer. Seat
tube angles have got steeper. As they've done so, pivoting the rider's weight closer and
closer to directly above the bottom bracket, it's eaten into the top tube. It's one of
the main driving forces behind bikes with longer reach.
Now, a point here, I've used these five bikes as I feel they've been mainstays for the past
decade, but there have been outliers who are well ahead of the curve here. Pole, for instance,
would be bouncing off the rev limiter of 80 degrees for many a year. Interestingly enough,
chainstays are one of the bigger places for variety, and that pattern looks sets to continue.
For instance, the difference between the shortest reach and the longest reach of these bikes
in 2020 is 1.73%. However, the difference between the shortest chainstays and the longest
chainstays is 4.17%, which is a massive difference. Does this mean that everything is settled?
Bike design will now be done via cookie cutter. Not at all.
These are the trends that have dictated bikes today, but I can guarantee in five years'
time we'll be talking about different trends. There it is, those are my trends that are
driving Enduro. Thank you very much for watching. Now, I have undoubtedly missed some, so get
in the comments to let me know what you think. If you think I was about on the money, let
me know what were your favorite trends. What's been the real game changer for you? Thanks
for watching, guys. Please consider subscribing, and we'll see you next time.