Last weekend we jetted up the motorway to visit our friends at Raleigh/Diamondback at their HQ in Nottingham. We took the chance to meet DB’s UK design team and have a chat about the bikes.
In part 1 of our Diamondback 2011 preview we met the ‘Bandito‘ – a 26″ rigid park, street and dirt hardtail. Take a look if you missed it, there’s a link back to this post from over there!
In part 2 we’re going to move on to the grown up bikes, the all mountain/trail range. There’s a few bikes in the range, but we’re most interested in the 160mm Mission and the 130mm Sortie, the second of which we’ve now got on long term test (photo’d here).
Not long before our visit, the DB team – including riders Clinton Johns and Lex Gross – had been out in Malaga with SwitchbacksDH ragging the bikes and shooting for their catalogue. Having seen Clinton and Lex both ride and hearing they visited the Sram test track and a few of the tracks we featured on Foot out Flat out 2 I’m pretty sure these bikes are up for some gnarly riding!
Anyway – without further ado – here’s another exclusive talk through the bikes from UK designer Mike Sanderson:
Pop back tomorrow for part 3 where we’ll mop up with a few random bits from the visit!
If you liked this post why not check out these?
Thk diamondback full suspension mountain bike