Video: Brendan Fairclough Pushes his XC Bike to the Limit

 Longer fork + mullet = much slacker!

 @rojo-1: He swapped the front wheel too so angles should be as they were initially.

 @vinay: still a 29er front wheel

 @mikelevy would be proud LOL!

 we dont have downcountry in the UK so its an XC bike.

What is downcountry anyway, it pedals up, surely it should be upcountry?

 @betsie: He does uproof riding (but no upchimney).

 @vinay: haha, that was a crazy one.

 @jzPV: He blew out the front tire and swapped it with the genius. 27.5 front and rear.

 @mmarkey21: which is a mullet just like his DH bike and Ransom.

 For what it’s worth Nino rides 120mm travel and 30mm rims.

 @marc-c: I don't think Nino runs the 120 mm fork...?

 @briceps: he says he runs 120mm now, first question I believe
youtu.be/5DCH0f1gyVQ

 @marc-c: He's currently using the new SID Sl Ultimate, which is only made with 100m travel.

 @marc-c: interesting he definitely says he's using 120 mm. The way he says it sounds like he's on a full 120 mm bike. I wonder if you can just remove the spacer from the RC version.

 He said he had 120

 120mm, he says it like 120 times if you watch the vid.

 120mm has been a XCM number for nearly two decades.

 @landscapeben: There are people who watch it without sound because of some circumstances ;-)

 @vinay: img1.mountainbike-magazin.de/MB-Nino-Schurter-Scott-Spark-RC-Bikecheck-Teaser-169FullWidth-c273ea50-1597284.jpg

thats a Worldcup winning version of the bike, does not look like the same amount of fork travel, right?

 @Chridel: No. So? It has 120mm of travel and you claimed it wasn't an XC number. Yet 120mm travel has been common in XC marathon for a good while. I'm no walking encyclopedia of suspension forks throughout the years but the marathon forks from Marzocchi typically had 120mm of travel. That Spark in the article to me appears to make for a fine marathon bike. And then you go and show a bike that has been clearly tuned for XCO racing. That's XC too, but not the only kind. To me (but I'll have to get used to these bigger wheels for reference so I might be wrong) but the fork in your picture looks as if it has even less than 100mm of travel.

 @vinay: yeah, had a look on the scott page, they claim the spark to be "trail" and the spark RC to be XC.

Whatever, the fox fork in the video looked long to me :-P

 @Chridel: Scott only moved the Spark from XC into Trail on its website mid-late last year.

Without changing anything on the bike. Go figure.

 @Chridel: Fair enough

 @Chridel: If you look at my bike in my pictures, I dropped travel for that fork down to 120mm too (from the 150mm it had initially). I've heard some say it is a long fork too but it isn't. Then again references may have shifted. Typically you'd look at the wheels as a reference to how big everything else is. My wheels are 26" (26x2.4" Conti Trailking tire in the front on an 29mm inner width rim) and my fork stanchions are 32mm (Magura TS which are both smaller than what people consider normal these days. So maybe for people used to seeing 34mm stanchions and 29" wheels, my fork travel looks longer than it is . Not sure whether it necessarily goes for people used to 27.5. I've held my front wheel next to 27.5x2.2" tired front wheels and it looks pretty much the same to me.

 @vinay: @Chridel

That Spark in the pic has 80mm up front IIRC.

Marzo called their 120mm fork the Marathon which doesn't mean marathon xc racing was really its purpose. I won't check now but willing to bet a lot of top marathon XC racers run 100mm travel bikes to this day.

And sure as hell 120mm hasn't been an XCM number for two decades @vinay In 2002 for example Kona introduced the 100mm front/rear Bear positioned as what we would call an all mountain bike today and that 100mm was considered pretty long. Only in 2005 it was upped to 120mm and still far from an XCM bike. 2000s GT XCR also had 100mm front travel (I think 115 rear) and that was more of a trail bike. 2000 Stumpy: 75/80mm r/f. 2000 Enduro: 115/100 r/f. Giant XTC 75mm. And so on. In early 2000s you'd still see a lot of XC hardtails with 63mm forks instead of 80. It was still a while before 120mm travel appeared on trail bikes let alone XC.

 @bananowy: my 2015 xc hardtail came with a 90mm fork. If you’re looking for weird, it’s usually in the xc stuff.

 In XC racing whether you have 100 or 120 up front makes little difference to the efficiency of the bike because the bias in the normal racing position is rearward. 20mm makes a big difference in efficiency for rear travel. And remember with remote travel adjustment and lockout (such as the Scotts have) travel makes even less difference to efficiency. As long as the weight penalty isn't too great. And at the WC level, it's a different story.

 @bananowy: Alright, I wasn't so tightly monitoring what people were running on their bikes but considering the Marathon was quite a sophisticated mid/high level fork I would have expected it to be used in competition. I knew enough people who were using a 120mm travel fork for this purpose. I rode one on a 130mm fork though admitted I never cared about the competition side of it. Just as enduro is nowadays, it was just the kind of event to sign up for if you wanted a good day of no stress supported riding.

Of course as wheelsizes grew, they initially also became narrower, headangles got steeper and fork travel went down. I've still got a 26x2.4" first generation Racing Ralph (rear tire in my pics) whereas it seems it is quite recent that we're seeing 2.4" wide XC tires in the larger diameters. So an XC bike with a 100mm travel fork and 29" wheels now may allow for the same as you could get away with on an older XC bike with 120mm travel forks and 26" wheels. I have no experience with the bigger wheels but at least this is what the marketing has been telling me .

 Brendog's bike is the Spark RC model with 100mm rear and a swapped 120mm fork.

The Spark has two versions. The XC and Trail models. XC (RC model) is 100/100mm travel. The Trail is 120/120mm of travel.

 Iterestingly Scott offers a 120mm/120mm travel spark (this was the RC with 100mm), but he didn't use that one.

 Did you realize sponsors aren't paying athletes for just riding their stuff!?

 Where is this anger coming from? This isn’t the first ever video on pinkbike...

 Truth.

 You’re angry that people are making videos you don’t like and won’t be watching so in no way effect you?

 Shut you mouth you cunt

 If you're gonna be like that, then an xc bike is a rigid 26er with rim brakes

 @murfio: who hurt you?

 @clink83: The local priest made my bum bum bleed