Sam Hill, Brendan Fairclough and a Demo 8. Well-fitting hats not pictured

It’s official – two-times World DH Champion Sam Hill will be riding a Specialized bike in 2009, alongside 2006 Junior World Cup Champion Brendan Fairclough. It’s not a full factory DH assault, though – Specialized is sponsoring Hill and Fairclough’s existing Monster Energy team.

The two riders will race on Demo 8 bikes and will have a full fleet of Specialized’s finest – Stumpjumper FSRs for training and SXs and P3s for the other kind of training. There now follows the traditional team/sponsor love-in:

“I wanted to ride for Specialized because we share the same goal and that’s to win races — they are really capable when it comes to building and testing new products and striving to be the best,” said Hill. “I had a good feeling about all the people there, and it’s cool that everyone is into riding bikes, and they are all passionate about it. I’m definitely excited about the future and what myself and Specialized can achieve together.”

Yes, you’re right, the grammar isn’t up to much. That’s fair enough, he’s paid to ride bikes. We can do grammar, but we’d be extremely embarrassed on a World Cup DH course. But we digress. Here’s Specialized’s MTB Sports Marketing Manager Scott Sharples:

“Sam and Brendan are brilliant riders with great track records. They are a perfect match for the Specialized suspension engineering team and their top-notch innovative bikes. Sam has a reputation for pushing his bike to the limit and ripping up the most demanding track like nobody else. Lucky for us, he’s chosen the Specialized Demo as his weapon to win back World Championship status. With Brendan also on-board, ready to regain the podium for himself, this will be an awesome combo deal.”

So there you go. We’d say more, but all this talk of “awesome combo deals” has made us think of double bacon cheeseburgers so we’re declaring an early lunch…