The World's Best Bike Videos #63
Sit back, flip on your favorite MTB video, and enjoy!
Let’s Ride
‘Tis the season of giant race recaps and documentaries from the season. Perfectly timed with the spare time most people have this week while they’re relaxing at home over the holiday. Sit back, flip on your favorite mountain bike video, and enjoy!
Lief Rides Fast
Ok, before we get locked into some longer videos this week, spend 90 seconds with this video of Lief Rodgers RIPPING through the trees to a Beastie Boys soundtrack.
How We Roll: Season 3
FMD Racing’s series “How We Roll” is officially live, with the first four episodes going live. Follow Tahnee Seagrave and the rest of the team throughout the 2024 season. This is some serious behind the scenes action.
Baptism Of Fire
What a wild first season that was for Norco. A massive investment in Minnaar, new downhill bikes, and a full race team (not to mention the video production crew that made this) - you have to respect the effort. Here’s a full documentary on the whole thing from start to finish!
Brage Vestavik POV
If you haven’t seen the movie ANYTIME yet, here’s a closer look at one of the sections of trail that Brage Vestavik rides in the movie. The craziest thing to me is how wildly different the POV and Drone/Heli footage looks. If you want to watch the whole film, it’s available here for free.
Did You See This?
Ready for a laugh? It’s hard enough to follow mountain bike terminology these days - check out this clip and try to hang on! Matt Lyons does this for a bunch of other sports, too, definitely check him out.
Newsworthy
🚀 Cam Zink has officially launched Zink Bike, with pre-orders open for the first batch of Vacay frames. We’ve seen this bike at a few events this year, and now it’s officially available for order. Here’s a direct link to the frame order page, go check it out!
🎥 Getting a POV camera for Christmas? This is the ultimate guide from Remy Métailler for setting up a ton of different options. There are more than a few videos about POV setup, but this one takes you shot-by-shot with a ton of different cameras, different helmets, different setups.
🏆 Crankworx announced their 2025 schedule, which includes some overlapping events with the new UCI Continental Series. Interesting to see these two global entities collaborating together after all this time. The continental series is going to be interesting, as it opens the door for more feeder events to the World Cup - which hopefully gives more riders a chance to build experience and eventually shine on the big stage.
😵💫 Last week was a rough one for GT Bicycles, who announced a “pause” and Rocky Mountain, who filed for restructuring to avoid bankruptcy. Sadly, this is probably just the start of news like this - the industry is in the middle of a giant shake-up, and while a lot of people thought things would look up by the end of this year, I think it’s going to be another few years until things settle out.
👉 Annika Langvad is back! In 2020 she retired from racing, became a dentist and a mom, and in 2025 we can expect to see her back racing with Specialized. She was absolutely dominant prior to retirement, I can’t wait to see what this new era holds.
👨🏻⚖️ The EXPLORE Act passes the Senate in the USA, which opens the door to a bigger investment in trails, permitting and creating new outdoor spaces. This has been a 10-year push for groups like PeopleForBikes, IMBA and Outdoor Alliance.
I Can’t Stop Thinking About
This past week’s news about GT and Rocky Mountain hitting extremely rough patches is not the first, or the last, news we’re going to hear from the bike industry. The reckoning is far from over, but the brands that make it through this phase are going to be stronger because of it. I’m also curious to see what businesses get started during this phase by people who have been let go from these bigger companies.
It might be a severe downturn for the industry, but it could also be a period of rebirth. Both things can be true at the same time.
I’m optimistic that, while things may be rough for a while, we all have an irrational love for riding bikes and the joy that it brings to us. No matter what happens, bikes will always be fun. This industry will eventually find its footing, and we’ll continue to move forward. Until then, all we can do is keep riding and having fun on two wheels, which is all that really matters in the end.
Learning To MTB In Two Weeks
The theme of this week’s newsletter is documentaries and long-form series, so I’m sharing this full series from this summer’s roadtrip. Watch what happens to someone who starts from zero and rides with me non-stop for two weeks!
We Interviewed Strava
Second Nature, the podcast about the outdoor industry that I co-host, interviewed Strava’s Chief Business Officer, Zip Allen. We went deep into the platform, their mission, and the future of Strava). If you’re using Strava, definitely check it out - Zip shares a ton of insight.
Thank You
Thank you for supporting this newsletter and reading this week’s edition. If you’ve waited this long to decide what to gift someone for the holidays, maybe consider getting them a paid subscription to this newsletter?