The guys at Decade Europe were showing off their latest wares the other day, and here’s a few highlights…
The product that stood out most for me was the new neck brace from Atlas Brace Technologies.
I’ve never seen another design like it and basically I can’t wait to try one out properly. It has no opening system (apart from an emergency one located at the front) so you simply slip it over your head, and once it’s on it feels incredibly comfy. Unlike a Leatt which is designed to be a stiff unit, this brace has flexible parts that sit against your body, meaning it can mould to your shape. The flexible pads also act as a form of suspension to help absorb any impacts, lessening the chance of injury. Forces at the rear are also placed on your shoulder blades rather than your spine. Overall it looks to be a great system which is low in weight, comfy, and competitively priced at £249.99
The brace will be available in black, white, red, green, yellow, blue or orange, and here you can see the rear shoulder blade supports which are significantly different to any other design that we’ve seen.
This shot gives you a better idea of how the front supports are able to flex and move with your body. You can also see the emergency release system at the front (the red dial bit), and you can see the adjustable pads to alter the height of the brace. This is really only for fine tuning though as the brace is available in three different sizes. Like I said before, this looks like it’s going to be a great bit of kit.
Coming in a close second place for my stand out product of the show was this Commencal Supreme 24.
Why didn’t they make bikes this rad when I was a kid? It’s got 140mm travel front and rear, plus there’s some decent kit on it too. So if you fancy spoiling your kid and you’ve got a spare two grand in your pocket then surely this has to be the ticket.
Another bike that caught my eye was this Ramones CrMo.
It follows in the Commencal tradition of low and slack, just the way a fun hard-hitting hardtail should be. It’s crazy though that in this day and age it’s more expensive to produce a steel hardtail than it is an aluminium one. This is the range topping Ramones, with the cheaper ones all having aluminium frames. As nice as those frames are, for me it’d be this steely every time.
The Commencal range seems to have expanded massively for 2013, so much so that we could fill this website talking about them all, but to save that here’s a little video that Commencal have done to summarise the range…
Next up is the bargain FLY Racing Default full face lid.
Great looks, solid and classy feel, loads of graphic options…and all for an insane price of just £69.99!!! If these don’t sell like hot cakes then I’ll eat my hat.
Sticking with helmets we have the long awaited Urge All Mtn lid.
The looks of Urge lids seem to be a bit like Marmite, you either love them or hate them, but we love them. I think it’s just cos they look so different to everything else, and if the performance of this lid is anything like the rest of their lids then we’ll love it even more. Several colours will be available and it’ll set you back £99.99.
We’re always suckers for a nice pair of goggles…
And 100% certainly didn’t let us down in that department. They’ve got a whole pile of great designs going on and even their entry level goggles felt top quality.
Finally, but by no means least, Royal Racing have massively expanded their range for 2013. They are of course still offering great race kit, but their all mountain/trail range has grown considerably, and as you’ll see below they’ve also moved into two more areas…
Firstly they’ve now got all those little rippers out there covered with an entirely new range of kids stuff.
And secondly the fairer sex can now rock Royal too thanks to the new women’s range. You girlies might be pleased to hear that there’s no pink in sight either!
If that’s not enough of a Royal dosage for you then check out the sneak peak video from the 2013 catalogue shoot in Canada below…
[series]
