When Italian Paolo Pezzo stormed to her second Gold medal win in the Sydney Olympics, it was on her trademark baby pink bike. Yet the bike beneath the pink wasn’t the same one she’d been racing throughout the year. She’d swapped her superlight Sugar for a development version of “Goldenfly” – the carbon softail she won the 1996 Olympics on.

We asked Gary Fisher himself “why so?” but he couldn’t really help us, as all team athletes have a free choice over what they ride for each race. Seeing as we don’t speak Italian, we couldn’t ask the gold plated girl herself either.
Besides, we figured it would be a lot more fun riding both of the bikes head to head and figuring it out for ourselves.

Before anyone chips in, we know we haven’t tested the top line race replica of the Sugar, we’ve tested the next one down (which works out a couple of lbs heavier) but we’ve spent a lot of time on the top flight bike previously. Secondly we know our STP says Trek on it not Fisher. This is because though the bike was developed for Pezzo in the first place, Trek had a hole in their suspension arsenal last year, so the bike was added to their line up rather than co brand Fisher. The only significant difference is that Trek use a slightly slower, more stable “Pro” geometry than Fisher’s “Genesis” set up.

But enough rambling, it’s time to give the verdict.

Both bikes are excellent, lightweight race / XC machines pushing the edge of the current weight limits for their respective amounts of travel.

With it’s taut rear suspension never interrupting pedalling (once you’ve hit that ideal pressure) and lively frame aided and abetted by the ‘think and you’ve turned it’ Genesis geometry, the Sugar is super responsive from smooth climbs to tight singletrack. Once that Cane Creek shock gets moving it’ll also swallow a fair amount of straightline impact abuse, which makes it more suitable for all round riding than the inch travel STP.

We have definite doubts about it’s mud clearance with the current tyres, and a slight niggle about the fork damping but apart from that we’d feel absolutely no doubts about lining up for any race on the Sugar.

Unless, that is the person next to us had the STP. However light and lively the Sugar is, you’re still conscious it’s a suspension bike. That certain element of squat and delay kicking out of corners and a ‘deadening’ of some vital trail signs. We could say the Trek feels like a smooth, whippy hardtail but to be honest the feeling it gave us – bear with us here – is like riding a lightweight road bike on your own personal tarmac trail ribbon. The responses are so immeadiate, yet so silky smooth it’ll apply power through and out of almost any situation. It’ll slide, it’ll twist, it’ll tense and coil if you really thrash it through corners, but whatever it’s doing it ‘s doing it in a higher gear at a faster speed than anything else we’ve ridden.

We’ve spoken to Caroline Alexander and the rest of the WCPP athletes who’ve ridden it and they feel the same way. Despite all it’s theoretical shortcomings of flex, SID shock being overkill for an inch of travel etc. the more we ride the STP the more we understand why everyone at Trek was so excited about it.
For those of you worried about the longevity of such a featherweight frame we’ve brutalised it as much as we could and it’s been fine, and we’ve seen shockless frames that are still going strong after days of continuous overload flex testing in the Trek R+D department. Plus Trek’s OCLV hardtails have been going strong for 10 years now so you’re not doing their Beta testing on some new unproven idea.

Like all bikes and tests, this is subjective, and we’re sure there are people out there who won’t find this little carbon whippet to their tastes at all.But having tested about 600 bikes in the last 4 years or so, this is the fastest race bike I have ever ridden, and if it had Genesis geometry like Pezzo’s did it’d probably be verging on that “perfect 10” score.

So whatever you might think about the inherent intelligence of blondes in pink and gold lame Lycra, we reckon Ms Pezzo got this answer spot on.