Price: £3,099.00 frame only. Approx £8,000 as built From: Ibis UK, ibiscycles.co.uk

The first Ibis Ripley, back in 2001 or so, was an alloy softail, a pretty advanced bike for the time. The Ripleys that followed were equally innovative: the MK2 was the company’s first carbon full suspension 29er. The LS MK3 introduced ‘Long and Slack’ to the range.

The Ripley MK4 was launched back in spring 2019 and I was lucky enough to be on the launch. During a day of hard riding, both up and downhill, we put this new bike through its paces. It challenged what I had felt about many 29ers, that they were lumbering beasts that steamrollered through the trails. With more and more capable, long travel 29ers out there, it was good to see that shorter travel bikes were also getting the love. After my April test ride, I started enquiring about getting hold of one and was told ‘October’. In the end it was November before it turned up – obviously everyone else had had the same idea.

The new Ripley owes the long travel RipMo for many of its new design touches. Previous Ripleys had a clever pair of rotating cylinders that governed the rear axle path. Clever, but they didn’t allow room for longer dropper posts, so those pivots have been replaced by links that move the suspension in the same way. The diminutive frame height (the seat tube is barely 16in) gets its influence from the RipMo too. This allows luxuriously long dropper posts.