The Norco Factory Team has a new DH race bike, and the story of its development is an interesting one. So we sat down with engineers Adrian Ward and Kirk McDowall to hear their take on the goals and design intent of the bike; what they learned from the development of the existing Enduro bike, the Range (and its modified DH version); the original test mule for the new race bike; working with Greg Minnaar to continue the bike’s development; and a whole lot more. RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+...

We’ve been testing a massive assortment of new bikes and other gear, and David Golay and Zack Henderson sat down to chat about a whole bunch of them, including the high-pivot Norco Optic and Sight, the new Specialized Epic Evo, the newly-mulleted Yeti SB165, and more. RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+ Membership BLISTER+ Real World Testimonials Blister Labs This Week’s Gear Giveaway Blister Mountain Bike Buyer’s Guide TOPICS & TIMES: Yeti SB165 (1:29) Norco Sight & Optic (8:46) Kavenz VHP 16 V7...

March was an interesting month for bike news. There was a dispute at Crankworx Rotorua which resulted in the men not competing in the finals, Scott is having crazy management drama, there are a bunch of interesting new lightweight eMTBs, and Simon had a recent trip to ride in Tuscany. In our third installment of Reviewing The News, Ryan and Simon get into all of this and more. RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+ Membership BLISTER+ Real World Testimonials Blister Labs This Week’s Gear Giveaway Blister...

Racing World Cup DH isn’t easy under any circumstances, but doing so after a spinal cord injury — and needing to relearn how to walk, much less ride — is something else entirely. Brook Macdonald pulled it off, but he’s also struggled with bike setup, burnout, and more over the last couple of seasons. For 2024, though, he’s got a new team, a new bike, and a renewed hunger to race — we sat down to hear all about it. RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+ Membership BLISTER+ Real World Testimonials Blister...

Georgia Astle is one of the many ultra-talented riders to come out of Whistler, BC — but she actually grew up kitesurfing and doing a whole bunch of other sports, rather than mountain biking. Once she fell in love with mountain biking in high school, though, her rise through the ranks was astonishingly rapid — first as a racer and later as a freerider — and we sat down with Georgia to hear all about it, including the state of Enduro racing and women’s freeride, Georgia’s goals for 2024 and...

Dakotah Norton finished the 2023 DH season strong, with two podiums and a 6th place finish over the final four races, but as he put it, the season started with “near failure.” We sat down with Dakotah to talk about the struggle of finding consistency at the limit; his move to Mondraker Factory Racing and the dissolution of his former team at Intense; the state of DH racing both at home and abroad; how to better develop up-and-coming American DH racers; and a whole lot more. RELATED...

Gravel racing has exploded in recent years and Sarah Sturm — who only started racing bikes in college, after burning out on competitive soccer — quickly vaulted to stardom in the sport. So we sat down with Sarah to hear the surprising and hilarious story of her path into gravel racing; chat about the struggle of not excelling at something you’ve dedicated a lot of time and energy toward; the evolution and professionalization of gravel racing; the overall state and health of the sport; and a...

On our second episode of Reviewing The News with hosts Simon Stewart and Ryan Palmer; Ryan may have uncovered what Kyle and Rachael Strait are keeping secret before their big announcement on Friday (March 8th); Simon considers adopting Ronan Dunne’s pre-race hydration program after watching his incredible Red Bull Hardline winning run; there’s a brake lever lawsuit to talk about; Ryan’s father-in-law’s souped-up scooter; exploding lithium-ion batteries; and Cannondale’s wild Moterra SL...

High-pivot bikes are becoming increasingly common but they’re still mostly reserved for longer-travel Enduro and DH models. Given that, Norco’s decision to move their 150mm-travel Sight and especially the 125mm-travel Optic to that layout was arguably a bit of a surprise — and it wasn’t one Norco made lightly.  So we sat down with Norco engineer, Colin Ryan, to get the rundown on the new Optic and Sight, including the decision to go high-pivot and the testing that they used to validate it;...

The first Tasmanian edition of Red Bull Hardline is coming up, so we sat down with Ed Masters to talk about the event, building and testing the course, and getting prepared to ride it. Along the way, we talk about Pivot’s wild prototype DH bike, the state of Enduro and DH racing in general, Ed’s outlook on the future, and a whole lot more. RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+ Membership BLISTER+ Real World Testimonials Blister Labs This Week’s Gear Giveaway Blister Mountain Bike Buyer’s Guide TOPICS &...

Continental’s overhauled gravity tire lineup has had a lot of success, both on the World Cup Downhill circuit and with everyday riders (we’ve personally been huge fans of the Kryptotals).  It’s a big departure from their prior offerings, with 5 new tread patterns to go with overhauled casings and rubber compounds, and we sat down with Alexander Hänke, the product manager behind the lineup, and Dan Brown, the CEO of Atherton Bikes and Team Director of Continental Atherton Racing, to talk all...

Blister reviewer Zack Henderson makes his Bikes & Big Ideas debut to talk with David Golay about a bunch of the bikes they’ve been testing, including the Nicolai Nucleon 16 Supre Drive, Ibis HD6, and Chromag Lowdown (and they tease some other upcoming reviews that they can’t yet talk about in detail). RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+ Membership BLISTER+ Real World Testimonials Blister Labs This Week’s Gear Giveaway Blister Mountain Bike Buyer’s Guide TOPICS & TIMES: Chromag Lowdown...

Simon Stewart is joined by bike industry veteran, Ryan Palmer, to kick off the inaugural bike-focused edition of Reviewing the News. Ryan and Simon tuck into what happened to Greg Minaar and Santa Cruz; Mondraker’s new focus on the U.S market and their stacked World Cup DH Team; the state of the industry in both manufacturing and retail going into ‘24; UK bike companies that are struggling; a quick look at some new products, and more.  RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+ Membership BLISTER+ Real World...

Moving up to Elite Downhill racing from Juniors is hard, but Rónán Dunne made that leap in 2021, and promptly started getting great results — despite only racing a handful of World Cups as a Junior and never even making it out of qualifying. After three strong years racing for Nukeproof, Rónán has moved to the new Mondraker Factory Racing team for 2024 and beyond, so we sat down with him to hear all about it, including how he started putting together such strong results so quickly; the state...

There are a lot of good reasons to try mountain biking at night, from simple necessity during the colder, darker months to seeking a new challenge and experience. We sat down with Outbound Lighting’s Tom Place to make the case for (safe) night riding, talk about light design, how to think about putting together a light setup for your needs, and much more. RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+ Membership BLISTER+ Real World Testimonials Blister Labs This Week’s Gear Giveaway Blister Mountain Bike Buyer’s...

When Ruben Torenbeek founded RAAW back in 2016, he had a clear vision for the sort of dependable, no-nonsense bikes he wanted to build. He clearly wasn’t alone in wanting a bike in that vein, because RAAW is going strong with an expanding model lineup, a bigger team, and so on.  So Ruben and David Golay sat down to chat about all of it, including why things like carbon fiber frames and fancy details don’t necessarily equate to higher performance; his philosophy on bike design and how he’s...

Vorsprung Suspension has been making a wide range of suspension upgrade products for quite some time now — and we’ve been very impressed with a number of them — but they’ve yet to offer a full standalone fork or shock. That’s about to change. So we sat down with founder and engineer Steve Mathews to hear all about the new coil shock that they’re developing, including a whole lot about its design, Vorsprung’s goals for it, how the prototyping and testing process is going, and a whole lot...

We got the gang back together to recap a whole bunch of the bikes and other gear we tested in 2023, and Simon Stewart, Dylan Wood, and David Golay picked a bunch of our favorites, including bikes across the travel spectrum and a variety of softgoods. Along the way, we get into bike design and geometry tradeoffs, headset cable routing, and much more. RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+ Membership BLISTER+ Real World Testimonials Blister Labs This Week’s Gear Giveaway Blister Mountain Bike Buyer’s...

Forbidden might be *the* company most closely associated with high-pivot bikes, but Owen Pemberton didn’t set out with that goal in mind when he founded the company. We sat down with Owen to hear all about his journey through the bike industry, including a long tenure as an engineer at Norco; founding Forbidden; his philosophy on bike design and geometry; how he ended up settling on high-pivot suspension layouts; the new Druid V2 and Supernought; and Owen teases some future Forbidden models,...

EXT founder Franco Fratton has more experience working on suspension than just about anyone, and today, we’re revisiting our first conversation with him that kicked off our “Very Deep Dive on Suspension” series, where we discuss all the details when it comes to suspension design and tech. RELATED LINKS: A Very Deep Dive on Suspension with EXT’s Franco Fratton, Pt. 2 (Ep. 146) A Very Deep Dive on Suspension with EXT’s Franco Fratton, Pt. 3 (Ep.173) Become a BLISTER+ Member Blister Mountain...

William Boisvert made his first bike frame — a machined front triangle for a Devinci Troy — in just seven weeks for a college project, and despite the challenges that arose (and the fact that that first frame didn’t survive very long), he’s continued the development of a CNC-machined high-pivot Enduro frame, and founded Tool to bring it to market. The prototypes are visually stunning (and quite interesting technically), and we sat down with William to hear all about their design and the...

A lot of companies have offered bikes with a degree of adaptability in their geometry and travel configurations, but the Albatross Apogee Module is a very novel design that opens up a much wider spectrum of options than most. We sat down with founder and engineer, Will Hilgenberg, to chat about the concept; what he sees as being the advantages of the layout; frame materials and ride quality; his plans for production; and more. RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+ Membership BLISTER+ Real World...

Two races into the 2022 EWS season, Katy Winton hit a breaking point and pulled out of the rest of the series to give herself the time and space she needed to get her mental health back on track. Having made a successful return to racing in 2023, Katy is now ready to open up about the experience. We sat down with her to talk about burnout and what her experience with it felt like; when she knew she needed to punch out and step away from racing; what her recovery process looked like; how she...

Founding Intend (2:18) Fork design & the first Intend offering (5:24) Why inverted? (7:09) Selling inverted forks & market acceptance of things that look different (8:52) Designing a full fork (17:16) Damper design (20:16) The Infinity EN (24:42) The Bandit (38:32) The Hover shock (43:12) Brake design (48:17) Deciding which projects to tackle (57:07) What’s next for Intend? (1:00:26) RELATED LINKS: BLISTER+ Membership BLISTER+ Real World Testimonials Blister Labs This Week’s Gear...