You’ve probably seen the mad minty green 2003 SID World Cup forks already, but here’s the first part of a full run down on an absolutely huge range (22 MTB forks alone) of new Rock Shox for next year.

The vivid “Rollin’ Green” (after Rock Shox riding World Champion Roland Green) colour is certainly eyecatching but there’s a lot more going on with SID next year than just paintjobs.

For a start there’s an all new casting with more obvious Duke style external butting. It places more metal on the front and back to stop braking twang on stutter bumps and a thicker centre on the arch, to stop wheel flop from side to side. Their figures say it’s 12% stiffer and having beaten the crap out of them while scaring ourselves senseless on a rocky, ultra technical 40 minute descent into Garda they certainly flex less than this years forks. There’s no brake rub when climbing out of the saddle either.

Rock Shox have abandoned the pimpy titanium nitriding (just like Pace did) for a cheaper and more consistent “slippery silver” finish on the Easton Taperwall stanchions. Another Pace-style move is the introduction of a remote lockout lever for the handlebar. It’s a lot bigger than the Pace lever but has an indexed lever to allow different stages of compression damping, as well as a push button off switch you can hit at the top of descents to get your plush back. Unfortunately our sample had a vital spring missing and was decorative only. A version to retrofit all previous “Climb-it” control forks is in the pipeline.

At the far end of the fork the rebound adjuster gets a small flag on the side so you can tell where you are (from + to -) more easily. The actual ‘Pure’ rebound you get still works fine (even after a severe thrashing) and there’s plenty of range to work with.

The carbon steerer and crown World Cup version still weighs in at 2.6lb, you still get a 63mm or 80mm travel option and if you can’t face the green they do an electric blue. No prices yet but we reckon the new improvements will keep it the ultimate race fork for 2003.

The rest of the SID family includes the Team (same remote control but no carbon crown) at 2.8lb and the SID Race which uses a new simplified version of the ‘Pure’ damping system. ‘Pure DeLite’ doesn’t have a lockout lever (remote or otherwise) instead it uses an air chamber and floating piston on top of the damping oil bath to let riders tune the initial resistance of the fork. Obvious parallels is the “pedalling platform” feature on Progressive shocks, or for cynics the old stiction issues air forks have spent years trying to solve! The good thing is that the simplification allows the lowest priced SID to come in at the same 2.6lb weight as the mega money World Cup. Of course real weight-freaks could fit DeLite to a World Cup and get a 2.4lb fork!

At the other end of the race scene, the solitary Boxxer now comes in three new versions.

The ‘World Cup’ gets Titanium nitrided stanchions and new forged crowns to increase stiffness. The new Hydracoil 2 damping system uses less temperature temperamental 5 weight oil, and not only do you get rebound and separate high and low speed compression adjustment, you finally get an external rebound adjustment knob.

The ‘Team’ gets the same features without the Ti coating, but we reckon the real hit will be the Boxxer Race. This loses adjustable compression damping but gets externally adjustable HC2 rebound damping, switchable 6-7″ travel and only weighs 6.2lbs. US price is slated as $700, half the price of a current Boxxer and the fork is unashamedly aimed at “skint huckers who’ll be peeling them painting them stickering them and crashing them into dumpsters”. We reckon they’ll sell by the truck load.

That’s enough words to digest for now, we’ve got more on Rock Shox Duke and Psylo next.