Retirements
Steve Peat, Nico Vouilloz, Anne Caroline Chausson and, if the rumours are true, Josh Bryceland. There’s going to be some big names missing from races next year. Of course, the time was right for these guys to hang up their helmets, but they’ll still be missed. We can’t wait to see which young guns can step up to the plate in 2017.
Fox Float X2 recall
The Fox Float X2 is a truly great piece of kit, if you need any proof, just look at how many top downhill teams use one on their World Cup bike. Unfortunately, there was a fault on certain models that caused them to rupture. This meant a lot of riders had to stop using them and were unable to ride until it was fixed.
Thankfully Mojo was able to offer a five-day turnaround on the repair and any future shocks should be fault-free.
The 2017 World Cup calendar announcement
The announcement of a new World Cup calendar is normally one of the most exciting days of the year. 2016’s was limp, really limp. There are going to be no new tracks next year, in fact, we’re just going to the exact same places as this year.
We’re sure the riders will still put on a show, but it would have been nice to have somewhere different. Hopefully 2018’s calendar will see a shake up of venues.
Trails being shut down
Mountain biking would be nothing without a strong network of trails and 2016 has seen a number being shut down. In California, Strava data was used as ‘proof’ that cyclists were being reckless and in the UK we’ve had MPs berating mountain bikers. Can’t we all just get along?
Bike industry jobs going
Some sad news at the ned of the year was that more than 300 jobs had been cut from WiggleCRC following their merger. Throughout the year there were also redundancies at Planet X, SRAM and Raleigh.
Let’s hope this isn’t a trend that continues into next year – the bike industry is nothing without the amazing people in it.
