Walking through the main doors, we felt like small children in a candy store !! As with last year the first bike company you see is Scott. This year Scott is doing more models of the Spark, with the bottom of the range being aluminium. For 2009 they have an all-new Genius, with a new shock with lock out, traction control and full travel options.

Always impressed with Scott’s lightweight builds we had a go at picking up different Addict road bikes, with the last one being the Limited Edition, this thing is ridiculously light - if you got passed on a hill by another rider you would have a very red face!!

This year Condor Cycles were celebrating 60 years in the business. One of the highlights was a titanium road bike called the Moda. This was an extremely well built bike with low key detailing. The bike looks super light and fast, and being a titanium bike it will out live its owner..

^ Condor Moda

Trek this year have an all new Top Fuel. Departing from the looks of the traditional Fuels of the past, it has a much better organic flow to its design. The bike also has a far more advanced lighter version of Treks active braking point system which helps to give you beater traction and control under braking. The Fuel now has 4 inches of rear travel but uses a full floater dual shock mounts to give a better spring rate. At the end of the day it still has a single –pivot axle path. The Fuel is also running the BB 90 system found on Treks road bikes. This allows the bearings to be dropped straight into the frame and allow the crank to sit closer to the frame giving a better Q factor. This has also allowed Trek to lose weight from the frame making 2009 Top Fuel an estimated 430g lighter than last years model, coming in at just under 2000g. All this is going to make the Fuel a lot more competitive on weight with its rivals. Time will tell if the changes make it a better bike, its looking strong in the hands of Armstrong with a win and second place in the states, and Liam Klien will be riding one from 2009 as he heads up a new Trek racing team. If you fancy a ride on one then on the 8^th of February 2009 you can come along to the demo day at Aston Hill and try one out.

^ Trek's new Elite 9.9 SSL

^ Trek's new Elite 9.9 SSL

Shimano had its new electronic Dura Ace group set out for all to have a go with. We were not overly impressed with the system, but we do believe that its great to see a company like Shimano moving forward with development like this and maybe in a few years time it will be a lot more advanced and will change our minds.

Also on show was Shimano’s tuning parts for XTR called Yumeya (dream workshop). The parts come in a gold and white colour scheme and save you a few grams over stock XTR parts. New parts include white tension and guide pulleys, gold shifter lever bracket, white and gold disc brake reservoir top caps, carbon rear derailleur plates and white gear cable housings. However were not sure if the white and gold quite colour scheme quite fits with the dark grey and polished look of the XTR group set !!

Biggest highlight of the show came from Specialized and there new Epic. On the display was Christian Sausers world champ winning Epic. It was very hard to drag ourselves away from it!! Like the new Trek Fuel the Specialized Epic has been on a diet and lost weight now coming in at around 2080g. Unlike the Fuel, Specialized has completely redesigned how the Epic works, still using FSR and its patented horst link design, they have mounted the main part of the shock under the top tube. The brain still sits down next to the disc brake but is now inverted. The whole brain and shock system is a lot smaller and compact giving you 4 inches of travel. Top end models also come with the new E100 fork, which has its own brain system. The fork has a steerer size that is 1.125 in at the top and 1.5 in at the bottom - sounds bizarre but this gives better overall stiffness that leads to better front wheel tracking, and as we were reliably informed you could hit a brick wall at 60 mph and still not snap the carbon steerer, quite who they found to test that we are not sure !!


^ Specialized's New Brain Shock


^ Specialized's new Stumpjumper for 2009


^ The new E100 Fork

Another highlight was seeing numerous members of both the Olympic and par Olympic riders, and after the summer games it’s a good time to be a British cycle enthusiast lets hope we do even better in 2012.

The biggest disappointment again this year was the lack of Giant. With Giant being the biggest bike company in the world, every year we think they will attend and low and behold we end up left in the dark over Giants new bikes. Giants decision not to attend again made it a shame especially as this year they have a new Anthem X with 4 inches of Maestro suspension we were looking forward to seeing one in the flesh and a new XTC SL that has an estimated frame weight of 1 kilo putting it on par with Scott’s Scale.

Regards
Kris
Bucksmtb.co.uk

^ Lightest production bike in the world 5.4 kg