Sunn took me to the Mondial du VTT at the weekend for their 2010 range launch party.
After a mammoth travelling day on Thursday, I arrived at Les Deux Alpes. Bed came around pretty quickly that night and Friday arrived with a lot of anticipation to see the new 2010 range of bikes.
The Radical has a new colour and graphics for this year, as well as some new spec.
The Radical Finest comes with a Boxxer world cup, Deemax wheels, and a pimp build kit with an approximate price of £5390.
For anyone without that doesn’t fancy splashing such a huge amount of cash, there’s an entry level spec for the Radical that comes in at £2999.
And if you’re after that one off build, the Framekit (with BOS Stoy shock and Idylle fork) is available. No price on that yet, but expect it to be around or above the £3000 mark.
The Kern LT (the bike I rode whilst out in les Deux) is slightly different for 2010, with a new shock for a better ride, and the seatstay brace is slightly different, allowing for more clearance between the brace and the seat tube at full travel. Its got 165mm rear travel and is available in a few different build options.
The kern is the smaller brother of the Kern LT with 140mm of rear travel. Also available in a few different build options.
The Charger will be a 2010.5 bike, with prototypes not appearing until around September. It keeps the 165mm rear travel of the Kern LT, but matches it to a longer top tube, slacker head angle, and cone-head head tube. This one looks like a winner.
The Tsar is another 2010.5 bike, with the only ones around at the moment being Titanium, but a cheaper Cro-Mo version might be available by the release time. Hammerschmidt equipped and ready to roll.
Sunn were at the Mondial du VTT with a fleet of Kern LT bikes for the general public to take up the hill and ride.
The Launch party was on Friday night, and definitely an experience. Armed with a fake “Tsar” moustache we hit l’Avalanche club by storm. Needless to say, waking up Saturday morning wasn’t so great!
The riding in Les Deux Alpes is awesome. The trails are all perfect, just lots of braking bumps everywhere, but it makes for an interesting entry to some corners! Its great at the Mondial, how everyone gets on and rides in harmony, dudes in their 50’s on XC bikes, kids on entry level bikes, the freeride contingent doing their thing, and the full on downhill guys all get on and ride with the mutual respect, that everyone, no matter what age or skill level, is a rider.
I’d definately read Rowan Sorrell’s travel guide to Les Deux Alpes in Dirt 88. I read it before I left and it was bang on.
I mainly rode le Diable and Venosc due to the nature of the bike I was riding. Like Rowan says in his travel feature, a downhill bike would definitely be best to make the most of the trails. Le Diable has a tiny rock section coming off an access road, where I somehow managed to destroy my rear tyre. There was no other way to get down the hill than ride.
The Venosc is an amazing trail. Unfortunately there were accidents galore at the weekend, with the trail having to shut at least once a day due to an accident. It definitely wouldn’t be a great trail to stack on, with berms on the edges of cliff faces and it’s pretty high speed too. This was taken on the top section, just dropping in before it starts to get knarly.
The riding photos were taken by www.photo-2alpes.com, check it out. They’re © L’Atelier Montagn’Art – Les 2 Alpes.
