More 26-inch hardtail success

After the 2010 World Mountain Bike Championships, I posted a summary of the bikes which had won elite world championships and Olympic races 2008-2010. The result: overwhelming superiority of 26-inch hard-tails, with only one exception of the races Christophe Sauser's 2008 world championship on a Specialized Epic dual-suspension. Well, since then "29'ers" have become so popular it's hard to even find high-end 26-inch hard tails in shops in the United States. Even the dual-suspension bikes are switching to "29-inch". There's been a move in Europe towards 27.5-inch "650B" wheels, a size which had previously been associated more with randonneuring, and Ritchey just announced a wheel in that size.

So one would expect given the ubiquity of these wheels and their claimed performance advantage that surely the winner of these most important races in the world, racers in which the riders have access to almost any equipment they want, 29'ers would dominate. I don't follow pro-level mountain biking much, so was curious if this is the case. I'll start with 2011 world championships.

The women's race was Catharine Pendrel of Canada won the women's championship. Here's her bike from Feb 2012 (although I'm not 100% sure it was the same one she rode @ Worlds).

Catharine Pendrel's bike
2011 women's world champion Catharine Pendrel's 2012 bike

Sure enough, it's a 26-inch hard tail.

The men's race was won by Jaroslav Kulhavy of the Czech Republic. Here's a photo from Canadian Cyclist, via Cycling News:

Jaroslav Kulhavy
Jaroslav Kulhavy in the 2011 World Championships
That's another Specialized Epic, this time with 29-inch wheels.

So this morning was the women's Olympic mountain bike race. The winner, Julie Bresset of France. Here's what she rode:


Julie Bresset dominating 2012 women's olympic cross-country

Another point to 26-inch hard-tails.

So my tally is up to 11 races: 3 olympics and 8 world championships starting in 2008. It's a biased selection in favor of duallies since that was the first year a dually won worlds. Yet despite this 26-inch hard-tails are ahead 9 to 2. Both of the two are Specialized Epic full-suspension bikes, the 2008 men's world championship won on a 26-incher, and the men's 2011 world championship won on a 29-incher. It will be interesting to see what happens in the men's olympic race tomorrow.

Comments

djconnel said…
Well, the score is now 26-inch hard-tails 9, Specialized Epic 3.
August 12, 2012 at 7:12 AM
schwa said…
29ers don't make sense with small frame sizes. I know women who race MTB who can't ride 29ers because they just don't fit. It might make sense to keep a different tally for men and women.
August 13, 2012 at 9:57 AM
djconnel said…
True. Results are strongly confounded with sponsor marketing focus, etc: it's rare (team GB in the Olympics, for example) that performance is the only criterion (and curiously, team GB used 26-inch hard-tails). There are women on 29'ers, so if there was a substantial performance advantage to these you'd expect these women would do substantially better. In the end, I the primary conclusions from this little "study" is wheel size doesn't matter much, and that Specialized makes good dual-suspension bikes.
August 13, 2012 at 10:44 AM
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