Roel

Hello from our Schweinfurt factory.


This week we had Roel Paullisson in the house. Below you do not see the new Cannondale hardtail this is a

special Mountainbike were you can measure all different kind things.

All together after the testride with a little relaxed feedback session. Roel was all curious about his his results.
Primarly XX feedback was awaited but Roel also had to talk about his person and his career.

thanks for your visit Roel

Interbike Wildlife

A couple of local desert dwellers visited two of our displays.  No problems though; Tyler Morland added wildlife handler to his already long list of skills and abilities.  They were removed and returned to their homes.

-Pmac

SSWC Durango: Pmac's Perspective

The 2009 SSWC was less of a race and more of a celebration. The festival atmosphere brought out the best in everyone. Here are some pics to recap my experience at the event:

Pre-race party venue

The Italians singing for next year

Pmac pre-race

Santa rode without his sleigh

My Noir SS crank took a few licks

Ladies Love Rad Ross

One of these is fake?

View from the Colorado trail

Fuzzy on tap

A few Hammershcmidt equipped 2x1s rolling around town

Schnell & Irmiger Win Singlespeed World Championships!

Singlespeed World Championships is a unique event, to say the least. SSWC09 celebrates the extreme fun side of biking.  Many of the 1,000+ entrants competed in costumes and on fully decorated bikes. As if this wasn’t enough, the winner receives one of the most unique ‘trophies’ ever, a tattoo!
 
Singlespeed World Championships - Durango, CO from Dirt Tales on Vimeo.
SSWC09 has a truly global following. This years event was held in the long time mountain bike hot spot, Durango, Colorado.  Durango native and SRAMbassador, Greg Herbold was live and on the scene, and of course part of the action.

Congratulations to SRAM athletes Ross Schnell and Heather Irmiger for finishing in first place!

It's a wrap in Schladming!

...and a damn tasty one! Today was the big day for the men's downhill final, with the main focus on the challenge between Sam Hill (SRAM-RockShox-Avid-Truvativ) and Greg Minnaar (SRAM-RockShox-Avid-Truvativ) for the overall title. After friday's qualifications Hill led with some 60 or so points over Minnar, but today the South African rider set a scorchingly fast time early on and sat for a while in the hot seat. But Schladming is and always will be Sam Hill's track, and it was again this year when Sam, leaving the start hut as last racer on course, dropped into the finsh arena with a killer time, taking the race win and the overall World Cup title for 2009. Minnaar slotted in third position, while Sam teammate Brendan Fairclough got fifth. The overall podium looked pretty good in Red (SRAM red, that is...) with a 1-2-3-5: Hill first, Minnaar second, Steve Peat third (and World Champion!) and Mick Hannah fifth (all on SRAM-RockShox-Avid-Truvativ). Great season guys!

In case you're wondering what Sam's wearing, here's a detailed view on his choice of clothing for the overall podium: the gold plated jacket goes pretty well with the leader's jersey, but also on its own, right?

Best team of the season was once again the Santa Cruz Syndicate (with all riders on the complete SRAM - RockShox - Avid and Truvativ package), well done Steve, Greg and Josh, but most of all to team manager and mechanics, your hard work makes us proud!

Ok, enough with the podium shots, but not with the victories, as last night (saturday) we got to celebrate lovley Anneke Berteen's (SRAM-RockShox-Avid-Truvativ) victory in the race and also in the women's 4X World Cup overall. Here's Anneke in action:

At the truck and on the podium in Schladming

Last night the might red SRAM truck hosted the annual Schladming barbecue bash, with Martin as the master of ceremonies and Erik Irmisch on the grill. Guests included a few world class photographers, team mechanics and many others. Thanks for coming everyone, it was a really good night!

Today (saturday) was the big day for the cross country, with the final race of the year. The men's final podium was topped by Julien Absalon, riding on SRAM XX, with Jose Hermida (SRAM X.0 - Avid) in second, Burry Stander (SRAM XX drivetrain and brakes) in third, Ralph Naef (SRAM X.0 - Avid) in fourth and World Champion Nino Schurter (SRAM XX drivetrain and brakes) in fifth. A clean sweep!

The women's final podium saw Elisabeth Osl (riding on SRAM X.0) in fist and Lene Byberg (SRAM XX brakes and drivetrain) in second. Good job girls!

Back at the truck, we have a top-secret spy shot of our newest engineer doing some classified destructive testing for some parts. We'd like to say more, but we can't!

Guided tour of the SRAM race rig

You've seen all the big factory pit trucks at events like Crankworx and World Cups, but what goes on inside of them you ask? Here, Greg Herbold takes us on a tour of SRAM's pit truck during one of the busiest weeks of the summer at the 2009 Kokanee Crankworx in Whistler, B.C.

Our stripes for the King

World Champion Steve Peat rolled into Schladming  for the World Cup finals wearing his hard earned rainbow stripes, but we thought it could be a nice touch to give his fork a little "extra color"...

Peaty was stoked today when he saw his new forks, we are as stoked as he is to see him on course wearing the World Champion's jersey for the first time in 15 years, all of them on RockShox Boxxer, since day one!

Syndicate at Worlds

Here's a great behind the scenes video covering the Santa Cruz Syndicate at Worlds.  It doesn't get any better than this...


Santa Cruz Syndicate behind the scenes at the 2009 Downhill World Championships from santa cruz bikes on Vimeo.

SMUTOK ROCKS, because he does...

Euro race truck back on the road again

This weekend we stopped at Champery for the 7th XC WorldCup.

Champery will host the MTB Worlds in 2011 and is located in the south of Switzerland close to France.

Crew needs to get used to the strange food

After two days of service we were expecting a great race day.

Really good to see the world competitive top 15 riders all can achieve a spot on the podium.

Form on the day, course, weather conditions and bike material everything needs to get together.

Julien Absalons mechanic Julien with his specific Tech Zone set up.

Results:
1. Burry Stander - Team Specialized
2. Julien Absalon - Team Orbea
3. Ralf Näf - Team Merida

Of course another podium sweep for SRAM drivetrain and AVID brakes.
Next week some more action from the WC finals at Schladming.

HB checks in from the Kamikaze Legends Challenge

I was lucky enough to be invited to compete in a "Legends Challenge" at the Golden State Championships at Mammoth Mountain California, with the downhill race to take place on the fabled high speed Kamikaze race course. It has been 10 years since I hurled myself down the 11,053 foot volcano, but it's just as sweet, and amazingly very unchanged.

Legends Challenge from Dirt Tales on Vimeo.

The Kami required special equipment, with the main focus being and comfortable tuck position, clean aerodynamics, a high gear to hammer, and a stable geometry. I decided to use my Specialized SX trail II along with HammerSchmidt. Talk about versatile, I used the same bike to win the Legends Observed Trials!

Anyway I had a decent race run, and saved my skin by only crashing once in practice when battling my arch nemesis, Tom Rogers sliding sideways in the Hydraulic hairpin. Action! Some race specs:

course length: 3.4 miles, 2000 foot drop
race time: 5:07 winner (my time 5:17)
Average speed: over 40 miles per hour!
Top speed: estimated 55 mph

results:
1 Joe Lawwill
2 Dave Cullinan
3 Alex Morgan
4 Bernie U
5 Rusty Lebarron
6 Greg Herbold
7 Tom Rogers
8 Mike Bell
9 Scott Smith
10 Mike Galeoto

Up next SINGLE SPEED WORLDS FROM DURANGO!

Chow
HBALL

Kashi Leuchs visits SRAM

Kashi Leuchs visits SRAM HQ from Dirt Tales on Vimeo.

Kashi's a long time SRAM athlete, so he stopped by SRAM HQ while visiting Chicago. He's here from New Zealand to join a meeting to support Chicago's Olympic bid. Check out the movement Kashi is involved in to raise awareness of climate change - 350riders.org

Peaty = Epic!

What an illustrious career, and now Peaty gains "the stripes".
Job well done. Congratulations to the DH World Champion. Steve Peat.

Boxxer World Championships

Absolutely amazing! Here's the real look into our little world. No further commentary necessary. Just watch and learn.

Eurobike 2009: almost over (but not quite yet...)

What a week it has been for the SRAM crew at the Eurobike show...and it's not finished yet!

It all started tuesday with the Outdoor Demo Day in the lovely german countryside: the weather was amazing and thousands of people came out to test the new products. Needless to say the big red SRAM truck was the focal center of the demo day area, our fleet of XX test bikes was constantly out and we think those bikes must have logged close to eight hours of non-stop use each, with every rider coming back with nothing but big smiles and positive feedback.

Moving on to the show itself, our booth is as great as ever, lots of exciting products and our very own "Tech Bar": no drinks served, but all the answers to every kind of tech question.

We also have our very own coffee lounge, unanimously voted as the place with THE BEST coffee of all Eurobike, period. Here's our world-class "barista" Mike in action:

On to the serious stuff, we have an XX exhbition (wow, that's a lot of "X" in the same sentence!) which is very fitting because that groupset is nothing short of a work of art! A giant reprodouction of the beautiful, one piece, CNC machined steel cassette is defenitely a crowd's favourite, especially when they learn that the manifacturing process for each one of those cassettes takes more than two hours...but that's what it takes to make the lightest, strongest and fastest MTB groupset!

Outside the A3 hall where our booth is you can also find the XX tent, where you can actually test the groupset and see for yourself what everyone has been talking about...plus get a glimpse of Roel Paulissen's bike Marathon World Championships winning bike, the first rainbow stripes for XX.

Last, but defenitely not least, last night Hammerschmidt got not one, but two "Milestone" awards, being voted by the readers of Bike and Freeride magazine (two of the biggest MTB publications in Europe) as the most innovative component of 2009. Luckly Elmar had dressed up nicely and his acceptance speeches were Oscar-worthy!

That's all for now, today is the last day for the "industry only" show and tomorrow it's open to the public, and we're giving away a 7000€ full XX equipped Merida hardtail which will be drawn from those wearing the XX t-shirts we're giving out tomorrow, so if you're around come try your luck!

Hello from the World MTB Champs!

Things are going well at the World MTB Champs down here in Canberra Australia.  It's Winter time down here but the weather seems to be holding, cool and breezy but not much rain so far.

Here's Peaty showing off his new V-10, he's all fired up!!! as is Greg Minnaar and Josh Bryceland.

Black Box Tech Jon Cancellier is experamenting with a new grease, seems that Vegamite is more than just a sandwich spread

The Monza guys (SRAM's Australian distrubutor) have taken great care of us and provided a first rate pit area along with a professional coffee machine which is making the cold weather much more barable.
More to come soon, including some racing action, results and the Boxxer Worlds trophy which is in the process of being built, should be a good one. Just trying to figure out how I'm going to pack it in my luggage. JD

Palos Meltdown - Racing in SRAM's backyard

The Palos Meltdown is the only local Chicago MTB race.  

Thanks to CAMBr, Participation has more than doubled in the three years it's been around.  Ideal conditions and a fast course helped gather the area's fastest racers.

This was the first year of SRAM sponsorship and all racers, spectators and organizers were excited to see SRAM support.  We had XX components including an XX Revelation & Reba, 2 HammerSchmidt bikes, and a Santa Cruz V10 equipped with a 2010 Boxxer Team.   

There was significant buzz around the cassette and X-loc.  People kept referring to the new set of cogs as "jewelry".  After testing a Hammerschmidt bikes riders are in shock and awe at the speed of the internal front transmission.  Local riders and racers love what we are doing and it showed with a constant flow of bikes equipped with SRAM, Rockshox, Avid, or Truvativ components.  We hope to continue to support the Meltdown and get more involved with the Chicago scene.