Barney gets his lank on with the longest bike test we’ve ever done.

WORDS BARNEY MARSH

PHOTOGRAPHY CHIPPS

Mountain biking goes through an absolute ton of changes, pretty much every single season: wider dropouts, different wheel sizes, different tyre widths, bottom brackets… and don’t even talk to me about headsets.

A few of them have genuinely altered the way we ride. First it was suspension forks. And then in no particular order, disc brakes, full suspension, dropper posts. Properly wide bars (seriously, have you ridden an old 620mm cross-country bar recently?). But the vast majority of these changes seem to be almost arbitrary. Sure, we’ve adopted some of them (front and rear thru-axles, 27.5in wheels) but the actual subjective improvements in riding experience have been – uh – minimal in a lot of cases.