The Future Of Freeride? | Riding With Sam Reynolds

Freeride isn't just a life, it's evolving. And today, I'm riding with one of the guys leading the charge into the future, Sam Reynolds. A true pioneer in the sport. And dude, it's so good being back out riding with you. But man, that bike, it looks like it's dropped out of the 2050, man. Plenty to talk about on it, isn't it? It's so, I don't know where to start. Tell you what, should we hit a trail, get some riding done, then we'll break into this thing? That does sound good. Yeah? What gear should we start in? I don't know. Do you got to spin your back wheel? No. No? Four, five? Yeah, five. Sounds good. All right, after you. I've never been down here. Oh, right. I'm sure you'll be fine. Oh, I'm overtaking you, I'm overtaking you. I'm overtaking you, I'm overtaking you, I'm overtaking you. I'm overtaking you, it's so good. I forgot to put my goggles on. Oh, no. Thank you. Do you want a track? Hell of a track. That's quite a bit, isn't it? Yeah. Coolest bike ever, right? Yeah, I love it. I like this front belt ring. Yeah, it's really cool, isn't it? Kind of when I first got it, I was like, oh, I want to swap everything out to make it black, but actually, I love the silver now. Looks machined and CNC'd, doesn't it? It looks industrial. Plenty to talk about, doesn't it? Dude, I don't know where to start. First off, how does the bike feel when riding? Amazing, I was so surprised, actually. I did make a video myself the first time I rode it, and it was all genuine reaction of just how incredible it was, and everything was different. It was like jumping 10 years into the future, almost. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? The suspension was incredible. The silence of the belt doesn't make a noise, and that sort of helps you hear what the back wheel's doing, what the front wheel's doing. All the weight is also under your feet as well. There's nothing at the back, so weirdly, it's actually amazing for flares at Darkfest, tail whips, spins, stuff like that, which obviously was not at all in the design brief. Not what they were designed for, no. All the weight is off the back wheel, so that that grips the floor so much better, apparently, because the wheels. Makes it more proactive, I guess. Yeah, exactly. More compliant. I could feel that straight away. I could run my suspension as hard as I wanted it to do the jumps, like I had on my old bike, but it would still have so much grip for the rest of the time, so I don't need to let it down. We've just come straight from Darkfest. It's the same bike. It's the same bike? Yeah, literally the same bike. So you've got one bike in the garage, and this is it? This is it, yeah. It's not in the garage, because it's here. What was the things that you changed on it to make it, what, Darkfest ready? Well, okay, the only things I've changed are the forks, obviously. I've got some 170 Manitou Mezes in there, and the rear shock is also 170, whereas in the downhill setup, it's 200. So it's literally three bolts. You just change this and the shock together. And that's it. From 200 to 170. And actually, I've put lighter tires on now. I've got, like, trail tires, because at Darkfest, I run the full downhill casing and inner tubes to make it heavier, so then it's better for whips. Now, the one thing that I heard was you, when I was following you down, it's just, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom. Did not know it was electronic, although it was like a mechanical push thing, and the gears all moved around in there. No, so the original ones were, like, grip shift, and that shifted the gear, but no, now the new one is this smart shift, so you can actually go from gear one all the way up to nine. Listen to that. Or 11. I actually don't know which one it is. Let's count. Railing down a trail, and you get to the bottom, there's never again that, like, being stuck in bottom gear, and you have to go, kunk, kunk, kunk, kunk, kunk, and smash your chain. You can just sit there and be like, ah, zip, zip, zip, first gear. Obviously, this whole frame's CNC machined. Yeah, out of one piece. One piece of aluminum. 40 kilograms aluminum. The whole bike comes from one piece. You've got carbon fiber, I guess, ribs in here? Yeah, so the frame kind of looks like an I-beam, almost like this to start with, and that has, like, a lot of flexibility, and I think if you were to buy one, you can, like, phone up, and they talk to you about your style of riding, what you want to do, how much you weigh, and then they push in the appropriate carbon tube, so I've got super stiff ones because I don't want much flex, whereas the downhill buyers have got much hollower carbon tubes pushed in, and the girls who are a bit lighter as well, and they want even more flex from their frame, they've got even thinner ones again, just so the frame's even more compliant and sort of flexy over the bumps. Those downhill guys like that, apparently. What's really cool is I found the other day, because you can just unplug the electronic shifter. Just like that. Like that, and you can just wrap it there. Right now, I can't because I've got a front brake on, but if you take the front brake off or wire it through the top, then I can just do tail whips and bar spins, so I've been doing bar spins and tail whips on the Gearbox bike, and then when you want to ride home, you can just plug it back in again and off you go. It tail whips easier than my old bike because none of the weight is at the back. It's all in the middle, so it actually rides like a lighter bike, even though it's kind of heavier. The weight's just where you want it. It's a beautiful ride, man. Another couple laps? Couple more laps, and I'm going to rack your brains a bit more and talk about freeride. Cool. The one thing I love watching every year is Darkfest. Well, you were at the first one, weren't you? Was there the first one? Nine years ago. It's like an experiment really still, isn't it? Like 10 years ago, nine years ago, I wanted to build the biggest jumps that have ever been made and show what I could do on them and see what I could do on them, but over the 10 years, it's developed now into the platform for the younger generation now to come up and for them to show us what they can do and use all our experience of jump building and try and make it as safe as possible. There's like a proper young scene now coming out, which is really good to see. It's what you always want to see, isn't it? You don't want to see something die out. You want to see it thriving. Now, you're the pioneer in this era for the youngsters to look up to and then vice versa, it'll just continue. It's like a chain reaction. You've got to leave it in a better place than you found it. Pushing your bike to the limit on big jumps like that, some people say there's not much tech in it, but there is a bit of tech going into it, a bit of nerdness going into a bike for hitting bigger jumps like that. Yeah, totally. It's like stuff that is good for a normal bike isn't necessarily good there. You just want it strong. Weight doesn't really matter at all because it helps in the wind. I actually, like I said earlier, put heavier tires and heaviest tubes in to help with the, I guess it's the centrifugal force that when you're going straight, it keeps you straight so you can whip harder and the bike wants to come straighter so it feels cooler to lean off. Obviously, everyone has their suspension pretty damn hard, but actually, I don't really. I just run it at a bike park spec. It just depends on what you like to ride. When people are like, how do I set my bike up? I just say, how does it feel good? And then ride it to that. Personal preference. Yeah, it's personal preference. You learn what you like better. You have crashes because of bike setups and then you learn stuff and you have a day where you're riding good because you've changed something on your bike so you just learn over time, really. And you can pass that experience on to someone else, but like I said, at the end of the day, how you ride a bike is not how I ride a bike so always take everyone else's advice with a pinch of salt and if you think it's right and it makes you ride better, then stick to it. There's no right or wrong way. Just express yourself, dude. Express yourself. And we do on a regular occasion. We do express. All right, a little personal chat. How do you like your bike set up? Just go with tire pressures. First of all, quite short. So I've got a short frame. I think similar to what the girls are running and obviously that's too small for what I should be running, but I like a bike to be agile and fun. Like I'm not looking for the best lap time. I'm looking for the best fun time on the way down. Smart for miles. Exactly. 27 inch wheels. Again, more agile than a 29er. Doesn't like buzz your butt, anything like that. And quite simple. Like that's what really appeals to me about the belt is it's just out there. So little stuff to get broken. No mech to smash, no chain to snap. So what oil do you use on that? You don't. You don't ask. That's the best thing. You literally go home. You just leave it. It doesn't go, or you don't oil it. Yeah, you just leave it. You literally go home, wash it. If you even want, because you don't have to. And then I think you change the oil in the gearbox every 10,000 miles, they said. 10,000, you're not going to do 10,000 miles, are you? Never, no. 10,000 miles or every year, whatever comes first. So like unless you're a beast, it's going to be every year. But the guys said they've run one for like five years and they've changed the oil and it's come out like golden syrup goodness. Almost no point. Suspension set up, I know you've got 170, 170. Pressure, pretty, you're saying a little bit. Not as hard as some people, actually, like have a bounce in it. It's kind of actually quite reasonably sort of soft for a jump guy. But it's cool riding for the Aon World Cup team, actually, because yeah, they obviously are striving for the best products, the best setups and everything. So I just get the kickback from that. Just sort of stand there and welcome the amazing parts as they come in. Are you looking forward to winning that 100 grand yourself? Are you going to? Yeah, I haven't tried yet, actually. No, I haven't tried yet, so I haven't won it yet. But it would be awesome for one of the team to take that. I think Hattie's looking pretty good, actually. I think she could be one of the main contenders for that one. So the winning the 100 grand is the first person to win a World Cup on a belt-driven bike. Yeah, downhill, because Hattie won an Enduro World Cup last week and they didn't give her the 100 grand. It's downhill only, I think. Okay, she saw a gray area, she was like, I'm going for that. Yeah, she won it, absolutely smashed it, dominated it, and then now she's going to give it a go on the downhill. So let's see, it would be cool. There'd be a good celebration that night, wouldn't there? Oh, definitely. I'm definitely going to make it out to one of the World Cups and hang out with the team. That's what I was going to question. I was going to say, are you going to compete in one of the World Cups, being part of a team? No, actually, am I allowed to? Well, you're a master, maybe? I don't know. You're a veteran. I'll tell you what, I'll be a sweeper. I'll make sure after practice, I actually would like to try that. What's that then, what's a sweeper? Well, I guess they have that, like after a practice session, they send someone down at the end to make sure no one's injured on the course. Oh, okay, like they do in a bike park. Exactly, like they do at the end of the day at a bike park. I assume they do something like that, so maybe I could be that. Anyone watching? Leger, I'm coming, and I want to be a sweeper. I want to try and get down that track and sneakily time myself, see if I can get within one minute of the top boys. There's someone there, see ya, there's another one, see ya. Yeah, you're all right, aren't you? Yeah, bye. Bye, dude. It's incredible. I like the noise. Fun, isn't it? Just have a pedal around, it's so weird. I might go where it's flatter. Maybe down there. Yeah, all right. And it shifts when you're at a certain point. So that takes some getting used to. It's not an instant one. You press it, and then it shifts when I think your crank gets to the top or something like that. So you're not like. So less, yeah. So it sits. Like not under pressure. You can't go like. You can do a little bit of pressure. It's the same as a chain, like you're not going to crank as hard as you can and change. You can put a bit of weight through it and shift. Ask Neil Donoghue, he does that. Oh, does he just smash through them? He's like a monkey on a machine gun. Well, that is a wrap. Thank you so much, Sam, for showing us this incredible piece of engineering, a thing that brings a lot of fun to you between your legs, eh? It is, it's the engineering of fun between your legs. It is, isn't it? It's totally true, it's totally true. Now, is this, question, is this the future of mountain biking, freeride or racing? For downhill, I think so. It needs to be proven, doesn't it? Enduro, potentially as well. Freeride, yeah. So sick. So good, isn't it? It's just actually, it can do everything. I've got one bike and it does absolutely everything. So I love it so far. So good. Thank you so much for watching this. And again, thank you, Sam, for bringing this to us. And I think it's a wrap. And I think it's time for a beautiful coffee. And we'll see you next time. Taking us, oh, I've got lost. Where are we? We're at Bike Park Wales.