Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few years, you’ll probably have heard of the Enduro World Series. Now in its third year, the EWS aims to determine the World’s best all-round mountain biker, with eight rounds of multi-stage racing taking place across the globe. In Finale Ligure, Italy, following two hard days of tight racing, this year’s winners were crowned. Spoiler alert - I wasn’t one of them.
- The course: Finale Ligure EWS. Five timed stages over two days; all predominantly downhill, but with some brutal climbing thrown in, along with plenty of steep, rocky terrain.
- The equipment goal: Light and efficient enough for the climbs, but confident-handling, comfortable and tough for those timed descents.
- The Horse: Mondraker Dune Carbon RR with a few extra-special tweaks.
Backing a winner
When I was invited to race the final round of the EWS, the only question was this: what bike to bring?
A whole range of bikes were considered from many different manufacturers. The first decision was what wheel size to pick. I have tested a whole range of 29ers, and often find them faster than their 27.5in counterparts. For this reason, a long-travel 29er is my usual weapon of choice when racing, but the reputation of Finale made me reconsider.
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The horse post-race, as it was raced
The steep steps and tight switchbacks made me worry that a 29er might skip over the bumps, making it harder to slow down and make the tight bends. I have experienced this in the steep, rocky terrain of the UK’s Lake District. There is also a general lack of aggressively-angled 29ers on the market and I maintain that geometry is the most important aspect of mountain bike design. For this reason, I settled on using a 27.5in bike for this race.
Modifications
Black magic rims
Tyred and tested
Cockpit control
Running rings
The race
So how did it perform?
Suspension setup
Crisp and precise
Issues
- As I mentioned, I could have done with a higher bar, such as a 30-40mm riser.
- The Burgtec Enduro MK2 stem I fitted was a real disappointment. It regularly twisted on the steerer during practice and racing, despite tightening the bolts way beyond recommended settings, greasing the bolts and degreasing the steerer too.
- A rock strike in practice caused a small crack in the down tube, but didn’t penetrate all the way through. When I sustained the damage on first day of practice, I made a note of the length of the crack; I’ve done about 10 days of hard riding on it since then and it hasn't propagated, so for now at least, it's not getting worse. While our sample bike had no downtube protector, Mondraker assure us the production bikes will. However, these will only cover up to the 'M' of Mondraker, and my damage was on the O (higher up), so it wouldn't have helped in this (freak) occurrence. All carbon frames are vulnerable to this kind of damage, but we’d strongly recommend adding some additional protection to the rest of the downtube based on our experience.
Summary
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