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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."
