Saliva alert – This weeks R.I.M is so big and juicy that its going to make your jaw hang down simply with its sheer randomness and enormity. You may be thinking that we’re going to launch face first into the MTB World Champs frothing, but let’s not overlook the fact that there was an event on over the weekend that managed to put the so called ‘Biggest event in Mountain Biking’ into the shade.
Now, I’m only going to drop a little dirty tip of the tongue teaser today, as I’m still having to wipe myself up from the action yesterday. Usually we don’t endorse XC Bandito racing here in the fear it may dilute our ENDURO flava, but its not every day you have the Weapon of Mass Thigh Destruction from the #DNglobalcollective lining up and representing to defend a National title.
To set the scene, give you a single stroke that leaves you moist and demanding more, here was the line up prior to an EPIC Battle commencing. The Welsh Assassin clearly perplexed by seeing a 27.5 inch front wheel being force fed to an antique 26 inch Scalpel:
“Hold on chap, there’s a wheel size other than 29?! By Joves”
SO?! SO?! What happened?! I know how much you need MORE… Keep begging, and stay tuned for later in the week when we’ll go full gas on what went down at the cHub XC Champs race held on Sunday.
Going down a rung, we’re off to the MTB World Champs, where the DH course was looking insanely bad ass… And that’s before the days of rain arrived making it slipperier than an Otter coated in KY and creating mental carnage. Check the preview here, a video that has been plastered on 789,456 different websites now, so surprising if you haven’t already had your mind melted by it:
Worlds of course is all about the racing… One day and one run to get it right. No points on offer here, no series to chase and no redemption chances left in 2015 if you fuck it up. As such, you have to be fully pinned to come away with the Rainbow Jersey. But, Worlds also brings out some sweet custom kit, which like a total cunt, I shall now froth over in a total contradiction to last weeks post on Industry addiction. Move aside, give me some space on the table and pass me a credit card.
First up, is this the hottest Demo you’ve ever seen? Everyone had expected Gwin to take home the truckload of bacon given his mind melting form this year, but not even the FUCK YEAH MURICA paint job seemed to help him out:
No Fattie Swatty box needed here
As nice as that was, next line to disappear up our collective gear noses is over at the Santa Cruz Syndicate #notatradeteam tent, where a couple of mega hot V10c’s were rolled out for Ratty and Minnaar. As I may have mentioned before, matching Enve decals definitely cause a bit of movement:
Shaping up for the Bronze Medal run
When Minnaar came across the line on this mint machine here, to take the lead, I almost choked on my own froth. The only dangers to come were Bruni, who’s spent most of the year either choking like a dog eating a cat or being pipped at the post by Greg or Gwin. Clearly Gwin has inherited Peaty’s Worlds curse, so surely Greg had this:
The Dream bike gets a little bit dreamier – Minnaar lining up for his 10th Worlds Medal since 2001 #Legend
But during the week I had the gut feeling oddly that Loic Bruni was going to win it. I was even called a cunt by some comRADes whom shall remain nameless for suggesting the French would fry it, but I had quiet word with him earlier this year down in Queenstown, and while it looked like he was playing cool, clearly he took it all on board:
“Dude, fuck the World Cup, just come second in all of those to lull everyone into a false sense of security – Its all about the Rainbow Jersey”
Yes, he may have never of won a World Cup round, but in the style of Danny Hart, pulled out the biggest win of them all by taking the Rainbow Jersey, looking as pinned as fuck doing so as well. The first order of business of course, in true French fashion was to feed the new champion to the nearest French Housewife, a tradition that Bernard Hinault made into an art form:
‘Trays Be On’ there Bru
Its pretty busy when you’ve just become World Champ – Next on the post winning worlds To Do list, he had to meet with Monsieur Burns, who wanted a Red Bull cap for alien shaped craniums…
“Merci for releasing the hounds on Gwin”
Ok, so before you set your underwear on fire due to the inequality of coverage here like a Cyclingtits reader, yes, there was another discipline going down over the weekend. The Banditos rolled out for 1.5 hours of suffering and beat down on the Saturday.
The big news though that got the patriotic fires burning even more than a mass debate on new flags, yes, Anton Cooper stepped up and pulled out an insane result for NZ Cycling! Holy Fuck, he just went and won the U23 World XC Champs! Quite stoked too by the looks of things…
Emoji face for “Fuck yeah, I’m world champion”
Its not every day that we get a World Champion in NZ, let alone in cycling… Let alone in a sport where we have some of the most awesome places in the world to actually do said sport. So, as you can imagine, the countries media would have been all over this epic effort and result right? Front page news as fuck man! Er… Here’s one of the leading news sites the day after:
The last headline courtesy of the Goat #Goatspeak
Yeah… Ok… Provincial Rugby is important too I guess? And that’s a solid beard there Charlie… Disappointing to say the least, but its good to know those dictionary nerds are going to be hitting the gym with ridiculously oversized birds.
Moving on, the Elite Men’s Bandit race was pretty much a copy and paste from most of the World Cups this year. Its almost a template now: Schurter fucks off up the road… Absalon chases him down over a few laps… They spend a few laps stabbing each other with lactic brutality… Schurter wins by a very narrow margin. Yes, it was the 4th time in a row that this is how it played out. This time though, we all know what he was thinking as he came across the line to win another world title:
“Holy fuck I’m glad that Welsh guy was tied up in Asia… Dodged a bullet”
Chances are all the roadies have stopped reading at this point, which is a shame as we’re about to unleash the equivalent of a tray of cured meats of coverage with a distinct Spanish flavour to them. Yes, the Vuelta is still going – Just minus a shit load of big names.
Ok, honesty call – Interest seems to be waning in the Vuelta… It was sort of threatening to happen in a way, but the race has been losing assets faster than a Greek bank in the last week. But even though people were fucking of to Ibiza, there was still a Grand Tour to be decided, so what was it that was making me go flaccid on the Spanish love?
The highest profile departure in the last week, Froome punched out and headed back to Monaco to rest up with Coco and let us know how his foot was. I assume that by “only one thing to do” Froomie meant more social media melt downs… I’m actually available to be a social media consultant (self-professed, the best kind), and if hired my first advice is perhaps don’t stick a cats head emoji on yourself after you’ve pulled out of a Grand Tour for riding into a fence when going uphill…
Stick your head up a cats ass to convert it to a hat, then eat a Maccas combo with red win whilst wearing a moon boot? Niche, but I guess its one thing to do…
Yes, it was another case that has upset everyone… Especially those with Michael Jackson gloves.
“WHY… Why is he still allowed a twitter account?!”
But in terms of losing the desire to stay up for the Vuelta, I think that it was stage 11 that sort of did it in for me. On paper it looked like an absolute beast and all within 138km’s or so. In theory, it should have been mental right? Just look at it!
Looks like something the Hawk came up with in a wet dream, or, just a normal WA training ride
Instead of being hot and heavy though, it ended up essentially being too hard. Yes, ram this much climbing into such a short stage and it starts to neutralise things. Perhaps it was more Moto Madness that was pissing me off?
“That’s it doc, just keep your finger in there and hopefully it’ll be sweet”
But I think it was the fact we had Landa win the stage and Aru take the jersey that caused the deflation. Hmmmm, Giro ‘nothing to see here’ flashbacks, but I couldn’t imagine a worse combo outcome for a stage that instead of having fireworks ended up feeling like someone had just shoved a wet, cold and used dishcloth in your mouth.
It may have a shot at redemption, Purito is battling hard for his last chance to win a Grand Tour ever, so its still an open race, but it doesn’t seem to have the same spark now as the previous two this year.
Holy fuck, World Champs, National champs, Vuelta… All sorts of Cycling madness flying around like campaigning politicians this week, but lets turn our attention to some industry news. The worlds worst kept sort of secret accidentally leaked out during the week, dropping a pic of the NEW Santa Cruz Bronson.
We got funny feelings in our private parts last week with the white final pre-prod frames (don’t try and deny it, you so did), so you can only imagine what happened when Neo/Das Wolf hunted down the real news, throttled it by the jugular and dragged it back to his lair. How good is this looking?!
Naughty… How did you manage to escape into the wild?
If black isn’t your bag and you don’t mind being punched in the face by the Dok, then they will also be coming out in Pink by the looks, which, in another leaked pic, seems to go quite well getting shredded to fuck by the Rat:
WHOOP
Not everyone had rad industry news last week… Cannondale were forced to recall a stem they’ve put on some bikes… 23,000 of them apparently. They of course issued a recall notice that was signed off by 38 lawyers and PR dudes. So, to help out the cause, we’ve added some Dirty translation for the cuntspeak in the recall notice in case anyone was confused with what they meant:
“From model year 2011 through model year 2015 (Holy fuck, it took us 4 years to work this out… Someones ass should be roasted) Cannondale used OPI stems on certain Mountain Bikes. Some OPI stems were also sold as aftermarket stems (to weird cunts that wanted ugly proprietary stems). Testing has shown (that would be the testing we presumably did for 4 years… Or, the testing we didn’t do until someone snapped these turds off doing something other than riding on a bike path) that the nature of the connection between the base of the OPI stem and the top of the steering tube results in a reduced fatigue life (turns out its a shit design… Might not use that guy Tod from the Pram Division again we reckon eh). This could (fucken has) lead to fork failure, with risk of a serious accident or injury (It was hard to know what to say to the dude who couldn’t wipe his ass, probably not a Lefty proponent any more we suspect). To address this risk, all OPI equipped forks must be fitted with a special wedge kit (A Wedge kit? WTF… We’re not even sure how to explain that) that locks and reinforces the threaded connection between the OPI stem and the steering tube. This remedy (AKA – Wedges, yummy) restores appropriate fatigue life (We don’t really know what that life span is, but if you’re a fattie then chances are you’ll find out pretty quick we reckon).”
Finally today, nothing to do with cycling oddly, but with Christmas on the horizon its important to remind everyone how cool Drones are (at the moment, once they become self aware and armed with plasma rifles, not so much), which is a massive hint that someone/Santa needs to fucken buy me one so I can go Nek Level on my vids.
Given this is insane surfing as well, a perfect segway to wish one of the #DNglobalcollective a Happy Birthday. Here’s to you Panther, I imagine this is how you look on the local break bro!
Stay tuned for the Singapore Nationals report looming large this week…
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