When Keegan Swenson crossed the finish line to win the Leadville 100 mountain bike race in a time of 5 hours and 45 minutes, as soon as the celebrations died down, it was his bike that everyone was fixated on.
A drop handlebar with road shifters, a mountain bike frame and... prototype aero fairings on the rear of the RockShox suspension fork.
As a race this sits somewhere between MTB and gravel, in terms of the terrain, Leadville has been a hotbed of innovation and experimental setups in recent years but Swenson's Santa Cruz took things even further in the pursuit of off-road aero gains. And he wasn't alone, with other RockShox-supported riders, including gravel star Sofia Gomez Villafañe, also using the prototype fairings.
Elsewhere, Kate Courtney, the Red Bull rider who not only won the women’s race but set a new course record, took matters into her own hands, putting two of SRAM's wireless gear-shifting blips on the fork crown. That enabled her to still change gear while hunkered down, holding the top of the fork in a super-aero position.
All of this got me thinking, are we about to enter a new era of aero gain-chasing off-road racing?
Possibly.
But is the rationale the tech really that new? No, not really.
We’ve seen fairings before, and for that matter, drop bars bolted to mountain bike frames, too. Even disc wheels have made an appearance in mountain bike races.
What might be changing now, though, is the mindset of mountain bikers. Aerodynamics have always – and will always – be important if you want to ride fast, but just because aero mods and know-how can help you save time and energy, that doesn’t mean the off-road fraternity has always accepted a more roadie way of thinking.
Learning from the past
As we reported on BikeRadar last week, Swenson sees his ‘Frankenbuild’ as the perfect mix and match combination of gravel and mountain bike tech, blended together to create one really fast bike (with a really fast rider on board – Swenson won the men's race for the fifth year running).
He’s taken the Santa Cruz Blur frame – the brand's sportiest, cross-country mountain bike – fitted it some drop bars, and debuted a custom RockShox SID SL Ultimate fork with fairings fixed to the rear of the lowers.
The fairings are badged with RockShox's Black Box logo, denoting the fact that this is a prototype coming out of the company's R&D department. RockShox are keeping schtum on the fairings – with no official word on the design, or the potential watt savings – but clearly the bigwigs there think they're onto something for mountain bike races where aero really counts.
Cast your mind back to the 1990s, though, and you may recall the likes of Christian Taillefer racing down a ski piste, aiming to set the mountain biking world speed record on a bike that even ChatGPT might struggle to imagine.
This thing looked like a butter knife with wheels and yes, you guessed it, featured fork fairings. Even in recent years, the likes of Eric Barone have ridden wildly aero-crafted bikes to records where, with no UCI tech regulations in sight, only one thing matters – speed.
And you can go back even further than Taillefer to see mountain bike racers using drop bikes on their regular race rigs.
John Tomac, one of the most famous mountain bikers of all time, raced a Yeti C-26 with drop handlebars in the very first Mountain Bike World Championships in Durango, Colorado, back in 1990.
Tomac raced both the cross-country and downhill that weekend, with a respectable fourth place in the latter. Yes, even using the drop handlebars.
At the time, Tomac was a road racing professional, so opted to run the bars to help maintain a familiar position on the bike, rather than for any real aero gains. Or so the story goes.
Taking aero hacks to the extreme
Looking beyond Swenson's Leadville bike, Kate Courtney’s setup was arguably even more exciting – and imaginative.
Whenever possible, she would drop her hands down onto the top of the fork crown in a bid to adopt a more aero position on the bike.
It’s something we’ve seen from other cross-country racers over the years, especially on the bigger stage races like the Cape Epic. I could be wrong here, but I’ve got distinct memories of seeing Nino Schurter, multiple world champion and the winner of 37 World Cup races, adopting this exact position while barrelling along at the Cape Epic, an event he's won three times (and as recently as this year).
Back to Courtney’s setup, and what's cool here is that she fixed two SRAM wireless blips to her fork crown, so she could change gear while in that aero tuck.
Courtney still retained the ability to move her hands back up to a flat and wide MTB handlebar – not a drop-bar in sight – for ultimate control when things got technical. Is that the best of both worlds at a race like Leadville?
Clearly, both Swenson and Courtney understand the importance of reducing drag to go fast, but that hasn't always been the case when it comes to mountain biking, despite the efforts of early pioneers like Tomac.
A brief history of the skinsuit
When mountain bike racing first started, everyone competed in skintight Lycra, inspired by the standard uniform in road cycling (a little like the long stems and terrifying geometry, unfortunately).
After all, road racing was already well established, with a long and rich history of competition, so it's little surprise that the early cues for mountain biking were taken from the skinny-tyred scene.
As downhill started to forge its own path, the Lycra continued but was covered in body armour. The colours and kit combos were something to behold – think Robocop in skiwear having been dragged through a neon paint factory and you’ll get close to what riders were wearing as they belted down the hill.
Soon enough, like skiers, one-piece ‘skinsuits’ became more popular as forward-thinking racers aimed to better their rivals by the slimmest of margins.
The problem for some mountain bikers at the time, though, was that it didn’t look cool.
In ski racing, skintight clothing had been the norm for decades. It’s what people expected. Mountain biking, on the other hand – and especially downhill – was an extreme sport still trying to find its feet and position in the world.
Could a bunch of riders dressed in spandex really fit in with the X-Games crowd? Most of the pros at the time certainly didn’t think so.
Shaun Palmer, a professional snowboarder turned mountain bike World Cup racer, wanted to change things and rocked up to race the 1996 World Championships in Cairns in Fox motocross kit.
Images from this race became iconic and many attributed Palmer for changing the way in which we looked at the sport forever.
It’s worth noting, though, that Palmer lost the race to a young Nico Vouilloz by 0.15 seconds. Vouilloz was in a skinsuit.
From that point onwards, it was common to see racers practicing in their sponsors' baggy, moto-inspired kit, only to don a skinsuit before their race run, and whip the visor off their helmet for all the aero gains possible.
But while skinsuits were known to be faster even back then – more than 20 years ago – the bottom line was that many pros didn't like how things looked. The fact that brands wanted to sell clothing off the back of these riders played its part, too. After all, no one was riding about in a skinsuit when they were mucking about in the woods at the weekend.
A petition was signed and sent to the UCI, demanding that they ban skinsuits and ensure racers keep their visors on the lids, despite everyone knowing it’d be slower.
'Image is more important than winning'
Eventually, the UCI banned one-piece skinsuits and the use of Lycra for downhill, something BikeRadar reported on way back in 2008.
"The wearing of skinsuits has been a point of contention over the last year, notably in the Australian round of the mountain bike World Cup where Tracy Moseley, wearing a skinsuit, won the women’s race by four seconds from Rachel Atherton," wrote Matthew Cole.
"Atherton wasn't happy that Moseley used a skinsuit, which, being much more aerodynamic than loose clothing, would have given her an advantage."
Cole went on to report Rachel Atherton's comments: "Fair enough to Tracy if she wants to do that to win," said Atherton at the time, "but for the sport and the longevity of the sport, to wear cool race kit and to make an image for yourself is more important than the odd win here and there."
Atherton even went as far as scrawling 'SKINSUITS SUCK' on her forearms and holding them aloft for the cameras during the podium ceremony.
Back on the gain train
Fast forward to today, and mountain biking is back on the verge of its aero era.
The most recent examples of aero from the Leadville 100 are clear evidence of this, but even at the extreme end of competition – downhill racing – more and more teams are putting their riders and bikes into wind tunnels.
The main focus, away from the bikes themselves, is the position of the rider on the bike. Perfecting a safe, solid aero tuck for a downhill rider to adopt between jumps or technical sections of the trail can save chunks of time and save energy for when it really matters.
Just look at Fort William. The exposed Scottish hillside is forever being battered by wind and rain. If you’re able to cut through it more efficiently and faster without any extra effort, that’s an undoubted plus.
We’ve not seen a whole lot of aero changes to the bikes, though – and certainly not to the level of aero advancements at the Tour de France. Maybe the fairings will remain for races like the Leadville 100, but I’m not sure we’ll see them just yet in XC or DH – and certainly not if the UCI has its way.
Clothing remains the easy win. We’ve come a long way from the ill-fitting, ultra-baggy motocross kit that was worn at the turn of the century.
Head to a race now and the riders are all wearing snug kit that looks hard to put on – and even harder to take off. They know what’s at stake and how tight the times are. A flapping jersey or visor that’s just a little too long could cost them the race.
And let’s not forget the Fox Speedsuit. It's designed to be form-fitting, but although it looks like a one-piece construction, it’s actually two separate parts, enabling Fox-sponsored riders to skirt UCI rules and wear it for competition.
It certainly hasn’t hindered the likes of Tahnee Seagrave or Jackson Goldstone at the World Cups so far this season.
What's next?
What’s next, I hear you cry? As average speeds at races continue to creep up, teams will be looking for even more advantages.
Cross-country racers are already wearing aero-style road lids if their sponsors make them, along with aero shoe covers in some instances, too. We've also seen shrink-wrapped fork transponders, all in a bid to reduce drag.
Long-distance races, outside of the jurisdiction of the UCI, will continue to showcase bikes like Swenson’s and Courtney’s, with more to come – but let’s not go back down the disc wheel route, please. They’re just dangerous off-road.
In downhill, don’t be surprised if you see more brands creating something like the Speedsuit, even if it isn’t going to be a commercial success. When races are won or lost by thousandths of a second, brands will do whatever it takes to make a difference and help put their rider on the top step of the podium.
Expect even more attention to be paid to the bikes going forward, and keep an eye on little things like number boards and how they’re shaped, as well as the length of the helmet visor.
We've been on quite a journey to get back to where some of the tech started all those years ago, but at least now we’re at a point where the focus truly seems to be about performance, rather than just how it all looks.
Riders will keep getting faster, and so will the bikes and the kit they use. As for me as an everyday rider, while I’m in no rush to fix fairings to my forks or ride about in spray-on tight clothing, I’m excited to see how close and exciting the racing is going to get as a result of this progression.
