Cross Country Race Bike Vs Down Country Bike | Which Is Faster For XC?

it's a key question what is faster cross country is it a fully xc bike with 100 mil travel front and rear or a beefed up down country with 120 up front and a hundred on the rear so gmb thanks to maria are going to pit two near identical bikes against each other the brand new merida 96 rc and the brand new merida 96 against each other on an xc loop to see which one's faster neil have you been training yeah you have i'm in trouble [Music] [Music] cross-country racing has got more and more technical and the bodies have had to keep up with that trend so not only does the cross-country bike now have to be super capable up the hills but also able to deal with the difficult descents and actually we've seen a real interest in this new sort of down country style of bike one that i think kind of blurs a line to the capabilities of a trail bike yes back in 2008 where this bike was launched you can see the evolution that this rig's gone through to get to where it is right now yeah let's start some quick bike checks and let's start with the more classic cross-country bike the 96 rc the 96 rc has 100 ml of travel front and rear with fast rolling tyres it's got modern cross-country geometry which means more capable on the descents more progressive suspension than the old bike the head angle is now one and a half degrees slacker at 68.5 degrees it's got a larger reach which is four five three millimeters for a medium and a lower bottom bracket and stand over height with more tire clearance for a tougher setup now over to the more down country bike the non rc 96 let's call it it's got 120 mil travel front and 100 millimeters on the rear and it's one and a half degrees slack at head angle down the rc at 67 degrees both bikes have the p-flex system on the seat and chainstay to save weight over a pivot and it shows just how serious merida taking the weight of this bike still the 96 rc 9000 weighs 10.29 kilograms whilst the 96 8000 comes in at 11.57 kilograms both have the flat mount rear disc brake calipers the frame is designed around the capability of two water bottle cages and a trail mine for accessories that comes underneath that top tube and the long insert depth for seat posts to give a wide choice for dropper posts two different frame levels the top level is a cf5 and the more affordable cf4 cf5 being 150 grams lighter while staying as stiff as the cf4 but which is faster blake you're well cross-country so cross-country is unreal actually you did do quite well against that nino scherter some good power yeah yeah and you've raced animated vampire and kate courtney they kicked my ass so you should really ride the full cross country bike nah hell no why because this one matches my watch strap so i'm gonna go with this and my helmet and my gloves fine i'll take it faster by then easy no it's not faster it's not so 2020 is thrown after that aspect unfortunately we can't travel some exotic uh location for a world cup exio track no we can't but we can come to the forest dean and ride the red run it's second best i think uh so we've made a bit of an axio replica track we've got some punchy power climbs a bit of single tracks and technical sense and some jumps so it's time to see exactly where these bikes excel so we're going to split this into segments and check out the difference in times i'm ready oh yeah no but you can go first though all right remarks get set go now [Music] this trail tacky rooty it's gonna be slippery i'm gonna give neil some time because i don't want to catch him up you know [Music] so [Music] the lap starts out with a tricky climb with rooty turns and short sprints from corner to corner and gradually ascends to the highest point then to a fast sometimes rough downhill with muddy berms breaking bumps and roots i put in a time of 15 minutes 36 on the 3.75 kilometer lap i was flat out from the start and blowing so hard what seemed like a long time i buzzed up the flat fire road and straight into the downhill still recovering from the climb my lap took 18 minutes and 12 seconds that was hard work it's non-stop you're either going out before you're bombing back down how did the bike feel dude really good though you know i used the lockout on a quite a lot of did it i didn't know on the climbs the first bit is quite rough going up then yeah right real techy climbing like this is as quick as i thought it would feel going up to be fair and the tyres are so fast as well yeah but then i was kind of surprised on daniel's it felt way more composed and confident than i thought it was gonna be yeah and it feels good going up you're like you know you're sort of perched right where you need to be for power but i'm surprised how good it goes down going down without one to any more fork being tired i could just smash stuff a little bit more than i would on and you got rail tires in there as well i've got aggressive chunky tires so the turns i was just like trying to keep my speed braking the laps down into segments the long first climb took me 10 minutes 37 one part of that was the final steep straight dragged to the top a head down pure effort which took one minute 32 the climb took me 12 hard minutes and 15 seconds that horrible steep bit took me one minute and 58 seconds so so on but the downhill one minute 27 that felt quite quick the diane nils took me one minute 54. what you want the good news yeah i think you look fast yes bad news is the only way to get a proper result is by us swapping bikes and doing it again a few deep breaths and lap two was on like donkey kong and i was slower by just under a minute interestingly i was 35 seconds slower to the top of the big climb with eight seconds given away just on that steep straight path but i was faster on the pure dyno segments 18 seconds the rest of the deficit was given away on the flatter or undulating sections that made up the rest of the lap dude i was faster on the short travel xc bike than i was on the down country bike but i was maybe a bit cross-eyed when i crossed the finishing line it was only 16 seconds faster than my first lap i was actually a bit slower up the climb by eight seconds and a bit slow on the rough downhills by 15 seconds so i must have made up the time on the up and down sections in between and the bike must have just rolled a lot faster on the flat ground oh man i like our more drag definitely so whether it's the angles and the tyres working together and actually the difference there is some of these climbs are actually pretty technical like steppy and with the feel of the aggressive cross-country bike it makes them a bit easier you just angled into it a bit more resist a bit sucker out actually doesn't help as much on the technical climbs bonds and center felt really good i'm faster oh yeah yeah oh my god i'm faster i was i was fast when i died overall overall if you're interested to see the difference yeah the climbs that's where it's out for me digging deeper into the results the fastest lap was me with a 15 minutes 36 on the 96 rc second for me with a 16 31 on the 96 the down country bike but that was 55 seconds lower third with a 17 minutes 56 with blake on the 96 rc and fourth again for blake 18 minutes 12 on the 96. the fastest climb was me with the 10 minutes 37 on the 96 rc second me on the 96 third for blake on the 96 a fourth and the slowest time was blake on the 96 rc the fastest descent was blake with a one minute 27 on the down country 96 second me with a 136 on the 96 third blake with a 142 on the 96 rc and the slowest times me with the 154 on the 96 rc so the cross country race bike the 96 rc was fastest overall for both blake and i but the down country star bike to the 96 was fastest on the descents i mean the times tell us which bike's faster obviously but if you were to choose one bike to ride which one would you go for well for me i i'm more gravity fed and it all depends on what kind of terrain you ride i would go with that one because it's got a little bit more travel you can go further a distance yeah we can ride a little bit more aggressive downhill which i like but it's personal preference i actually think i'd go for them for the rc yeah full-on cross-country bars and you could always you know stick twenty-one more on the fork and you know be able to swap it around of course you can yeah oh neil wow that is that was hard graft absolutely smashed ourselves in a cross country bikes leave us a comment down below if you love seeing us riding across country bikes and killing ourselves it's good fun occasionally and uh yeah give us thumbs up if you enjoy this video see ya oh neil i think i'm gonna ride this one home it's lighter to pedal but this one matches your gloves than your watch and yeah you can have my gloves for you oh my goodness me neil

Channel: Global Mountain Bike Network

Views: 137,053

Keywords: down country, cross country, xc bike, race, versus, head to head, forest of dean, fod, xc loop, technical, tech, which is faster, challnege, down country bike, merida, ninety-six, rc, bike race, GMBN, Global Mountain Bike Network, mountain biking, mountain bike, Bicycle (Product Category), MTB, Bicycle, Downhill, XC, Cross Country, Enduro, MTB skills, bike skills, mountain bike skills, bike, bike riding, cycling, gmvn, neil donoghue, blake samson, sec-feature, ዩ, scbpgmbn15, 1w, ꔇ, ፕ15, loop

Id: xCi25qKsoh8

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020