Oh, yes - now I wish I had a time machine! Then I would set it to 1996 and turn up in Kamloops, British Columbia. How the freeride pioneers Wade Simmons, Richie Schley and Brett Tippie would stare if I suddenly stood next to them. They with their nasty fullys from back then: 60 millimetres of travel, 71 mm steering angle, 120 mm stems, 620 mm handlebars, 1.9 mm tyres. And me with the Scott Ransom. Or the YT Capra. Or even better: the Bold. They wouldn't even notice the shock because it's hidden in the down tube. What fun that would be! The Canadians would look so stupid - and then even stupider when I trotted past them to tear through the famous Kamloops cliffs like a motocrosser. These are dreams of omnipotence, but also thoughts that we inevitably had when we inspected the current test field. Because these bikes redefine the term freerider. Gone are the days when you had to really torture yourself downhill and uphill for maximum riding fun. So much so that we often slumped down next to our Specialized SX Trail (17.7 kg) at the start of the Lago Trail 601 and fell into a mini coma. That was back in the heyday of freeriding, around 2006.
We didn't take the easy way out this time and tested the bikes more extensively than ever. We didn't just blast over bike park trails, but actually climbed mountain peaks with the bikes, curved through alpine trails, undulating single trails, root trails and bludgeoned over real downhill tracks. On the latter, we wanted to check whether these all-rounders can really do everything.
The complete test of these eight freeride bikes with all data and grades is available as a PDF in the download area below:
- Bold Unplugged
- Canyon Torque CF 9.0 Pro
- Ghost FR amR 8.7
- Kona Process 165
- Liteville 601 MK4
- Scott Ransom 900 Tuned
- Rocky Mountain Slayer C70
- YT Capra 27 CF Pro Race
Downloads:
Dimitri Lehner
Editor
