Plus a thing to bear in mind are those fast rolling XC tyres which are great for going uphill but give very little support under breaking or when leaning into corners or on off camber sections. So I definitely wouldn’t feel comfortable throwing this bike at some gnarly rocky steep trails, which I did and was very pleased when it was over! This is definitely the realm of the Trial/Enduro bike, of course it will handle anything you ask of it, but it’s not going to be as fast as those other bikes. It is a sheer pleasure to flick on the tight trails, which we have a lot of here in Greece, and it easily skips from one side to another thanks to its light weight and short chainstays!īut let’s talk a bit about suspension, the bike only has 100mm, and even though it feels like more, it’s not. Well that means this bike is a demon, probably Beelzebub, to point down a trail! The 29” wheels feel more like 650b’s but still roll over everything effortlessly, a low standover height means the bike handles everything like Turkish Delight… sweet, very sweet. Cannondale use the term ‘OutFront’ geometry, remember that fork offset and headtube angle which results in a long slack front-end, and good wheel base length. Now things get even spicier when you point this bike downhill, and let’s be honest this is what most of us are interested in. Riding slowly up hills really isn’t an option here, those big 29” wheels don’t like going slow, not at all, once you start bringing your cadence up the speed of the bike increases profoundly and seems to keep the speed up effortlessly, simply put, this bike likes to be ridden fast! ![]() ![]() So the big news flash is this super light 100mm Carbon XC race bike designed to go up hills like Peter Sagan on steroids actually does just that! No surprise there of course, but for me, a rider who spends most of his time on heavy Enduro, Super Enduro and DH bikes this was an incredible eye opener to be honest. Well instead of a bearing link Cannondale has built flex into the frame to allow for the movement under compression, they call it ‘Zero pivot flexstay’ and have been using it for years! The not so obvious is that the rear end has a built in 6mm offset (towards the drive-side), known as Asymmetric Integration, which helps with making the rear end stiffer and better for 2×11 drivetrains without any compromise in shifting, but let’s not get into all that here! Next is that rear triangle, and there are two things, one obvious and one not that obvious the obvious… where on earth is the bearing at the chainstay/seatstay point? The most important thing about the geometry though is the headtube angle, which is 69.5ᵒ which in combination with the fork offset of 55mm makes for really interesting steering when pointed Downhill, yes very interesting (I’m still smiling). ![]() I tested the size Medium, I’m 173 (only just), weight, well let’s just say I’m on the light side of things and the bike fitted me perfectly, and I really mean perfectly! The geometry on this bike is perfect, even the stem and the handlebar, in fact there isn’t a thing I would change about the set up. ![]() Let’s talk about the numbers and get that out the way first. Oh yes, it’s a 29er, it’s carbon and it has a weird fork up front! It’s aimed at the sharp end of MTB racing but someone accidently dropped the bottle of Tabasco in the recipe and things have gotten a bit weird!!
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