How one engineering student’s idea became a reality thanks to Hope Technology.

WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY CHIPPS

Maxime Lallemand loves riding bikes in the French mountains. He loves racing enduros, and blasting down mountains flat out. The only trouble is, he’s always had a bit of a weak grip on one hand. Not enough to stop him from hanging on, but enough to make constant hauling on the brakes an issue on long descents.

Being an engineering student, he decided to see if he could engineer a solution to his problem. Other riders and engineers have looked at this predicament in the past and there have been many different approaches; running two separate brake levers stacked on top of each other or combining a single lever with two reservoirs. Each solution comes with its own issues. Two brake levers tend to take up a lot of room on the bars - and with a shifter (and dropper lever) sharing that side of the bars too, things get crowded. The ‘two calipers from one lever’ solution also brings its own issues. How do you set your brake bias? 50% front and 50% rear? 70/30? What happens if you’re on steep shale and need less front brake? How do you endo? How do you skid round a corner without high-siding? You could have a biasadjuster, but how would you adjust it while trying to descend a mountain with that much going on already?