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As announced here on BIKEmagic over a week ago, according to a well-placed international source, three top bike
brands will be pulling out of sponsoring downhill teams from next year
"Specialized (official), Cannondale (most probably) and GT (still in discussion,
but very probable) are going to drop their DH pro teams next year," says our
international source.
"Then nobody will remain more or less."
Our mole has a dig:
"The DH market more or less killed itself. Consumers shave their savings for
a fork and because a new one is designed five minutes later the ‘old’ one is meant
to be not worth fitting to your shopping bike!"
"Even 10 years after the technological acceleration, companies keep on proposing
things which don’t have a real effect. I’m glad some companies preferred profits
to innovation at any cost. Now the sport is dying, and it will dramatically die in
the next two years.
"You just have to come to a World Cup race to see how few spectators are there.
Companies that invested so much in DH were expecting much more feedback from other
medias than bike related ones. The first years, it was great, then the return on
investment was quoted pretty badly, and you mustn’t be a scientist to predict that
soon or later all the rats would run.
I’m sorry for those generation of racers and riders that like this particular sport,
but this the beggining of the end, and other companies all over the world will quit
the scene with the big ones to make less noise. I hope to be wrong, because DH remains
really a great spectacle."
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