The Scratchmere Scar DH crew are having a fundraising bash on the 2nd October.

It’s in aid of the Great Northern Air Ambulance and will include loads of fun events including a 24 hour DH uplift, scrap heap challenge and fancy dress XC loop. Sounds like a good laugh for a good cause.

Get involved here

NPS4X Round 6 results – taken from NPS4x.com

FINAL PLACE REPORT

Total Entries = 93

Click here for the 423 race homepage

The team behind the Settle Cycling Festival are on the look out for some help to put on this year’s event. Ben Ineson and Tom Rogers were a big force in getting the event together in previous years and without them the team are struggling a wee bit…

Can you help? Check out their press release and give ‘em  shout. Sounds like a good cause.

Here it is (sent to the RIP Ben and Tom Facebook group):

“I am Mark Dale, and I run community events in Settle. Tom and Ben helped us out big time last year, with The Settle Cycling Festival – they did some jumping etc….. It was me and a few others who put together the Memorial Ride and Bash for their memory….

We are hosting The Festival Again, Sept 25-27th 2009, and want to do something in memorial for them …. probably staged jumping again, and some fun and noise, and speeches etc ….

The trouble is, Tom was our main contact for doing all this. – Would it be possible for you to message the members of the facebook RIP group, to see if there is anyone keen and able to help pull something together? – ask them to contact me via my facebook profile, or by email – mark@settlefestival.co.uk

I hope you can help on this,

cheers,

Mark Dale “

Check  out the Facebook group here
Photo is by Chris Griffith.

Persist Components are a new UK company based up in Derby. They’re just getting started but have already brought out a couple of top quality downhill components including the ‘Optimus’ Fox 40 crown/stem and this ‘Triumph’ direct mount Boxxer stem. Rich at Persist has very kindly lent us a Triumph stem to play with for a month or so and we’ll be giving it a decent write up in WO issue 10.

Out of the box the quality, finish and attention to detail are great. Everything is gorgeously machined and there’s no excess fat to be seen.  As you can see from the snaps there are loads of bits drilled out and machined away to keep everything light and looking (I reckon) really good.  Even the bolts are top quality with 4 x gold ti bolts for the faceplate and 4 x zinc plated bolts to clamp everything onto your crown. Top quality throughout. The whole lot weighs in at about 180g with bolts

Triumph stem on Rob Smith's World Cup race bike

Why go for a direct mount stem? Well… light weight, simple, stiff, no risk of your bars twisting on your race run. In this case you also get a nice and low stack height to keep your bars/front end low. Having popped the stem on this evening and spun off down the road I reckon the ride position feels great when teamed up with my low-rise bars.

One thing to be aware of  is that the design doesn’t leave much room for headset spacers. It’s not a big issue but just make sure that you’ve got some thin spacers to hand if you’re planning on leaving a bit of headtube above your crown. By ‘thin’ I mean the width of the actual metal of the spacer NOT the stack height, most are about 4mm which won’t fit into the Triumph.  It’s not that big a deal as you can use something like this which is cheap and easy to pick up from your local bike shop. Just keep it in mind when you order the stem so there’s no delay in getting it on the bike. If you’re skint just get your metal file out and get creative on your current spacers.

Other than that -  the Triumph is all good so far. I’m looking forward to giving it a bash on some secret North Wales  DH tracks this weekend. Keep an eye on the next Wideopen for an update once it’s had a beasting.

Here’s the official blurb from Persist:

Designed for riders who want performance and seeking noticeable improvements from their bike. Race tested from grass roots to world cup status.

- 4 bolt direct mount stem compatible with RockShox Boxxer (2005+) Fox 40s (2009+) the new Manitou Dorados and BOS Idylle forks
- Super strong one piece construction reduces flex and improves handling
- 50mm reach stem with true zero degree rise keeps the bars low improving feel and positioning on bike.
- CNC machined from 6061 T6 aluminium
- Grade 5 Gold Titanium bolts as standard
- Very strong Grade 12.9 Zinc plated mounting bolts
- Anodized black only
- Lightweight 155g (WO – 180g with bolts)
- £70 (free UK postage and £10 postage cost to Global customers)

If you want some more info be sure to head over to http://www.persistcomponents.com/ or check out their facebook and Myspace

Triumph stems on the manufacturing line

UPDATE: Here’s our follow up review of the stem in Wideopenmag Issue 10 (click the image to launch):

Don’t let anyone tell you being a World Cup film maker is an easy ride. Mono rolled off a flight from Canada at 9 AM yesterday, turned up at my house, slept off the jetlag for an hour then got this video edited on the sofa and over to the CRC team same day. I’d like to think that by plying him with tea I helped make this vid happen.

Here’s the latest CRC team vid anyway – nice work Mono!

More bike Mountain Biking >>

Crazy close racing in Bromont! Here’s the video courtesy of the lovely mtbcut boyos, filmed by wideopen videographer Mono!

Courtesy of Mono & Stu at mtbcut.tv