What are the best downhill mountain bikes for freeride mountain biking? If you’re going to be freeriding you need one of the burliest bikes on the market, and a good bit of manoeuvrability as well.
At the big outings like Red Bull Rampage you’ll see the pros sporting dual crown forks, hefty, steel spring-equipped rear shocks, typically eight inches of travel and often riding 26 inch wheels… But what frames will they be on?
Here are just some of the best downhill mountain bikes for freeride adventure, trusted by the pros when they drop off the trail map…
Polygon Collosus
Coming out of Indonesia, the Polygon Collosus was the rig ridden to the Red Bull Rampage win by Kurt Sorge in 2015. It’s also the regular of British shredder Sam Reynolds.
YT Tues
The YT is one of the stand out bikes of the past few years – a downhill bike ridden to the World Cup overall by Aaron Gwin and being piloted by freeride legends like Cam Zink and Andre Lacondeguy even further off-road as well.
The bike is affordable, well designed and rides brilliantly. With Zink and Lacondeguy putting it through its paces, you know it can take a beating. Zink rides a custom YT Tues with RockShock suspension with a Vivid R2C coil and a BoXXer World Cup, as well as a SRAM X0 DH drivetrain and GUIDE brakes.