Milan Vader is back in the Mountain Bike World Cup after a last part of road activity with Team Jumbo Visma, including a terrible accident where he was in a coma. But what has caught the eye is the shock absorber, or rather the lack of the shock absorber, on his new Full-Suspension.
The source is the Dutch portal Brujulabike.com: the Dutch Milan Vader ran the Short Track event of the World Cup (won by Tom Pidcock) with a piece of aluminum in place of the shock making its new Cervelo ZFS-5 (presented a few days ago) lighter and stiffer.
But why did he do this? It seems that Vader exploited a flaw in the UCI regulations to race the Short Track test with a higher-performance bike than his usual full bike. In fact, the current UCI regulations oblige cyclists to compete in the test XCO on Sunday with the same bike they use during the Short Track on Friday, but allows the change of its components. Here because Nino Schurter, for example, uses the 120mm Spark in Short Track and not a more performing Front model: in fact, bikers always choose the most suitable bicycle model for Sunday's race even if it is a disadvantage in an explosive discipline like Short Track.
LOOPPER IN THE REGULATION
Do you have to use the same bike but is it allowed to change its components? Here the volponi engineers of Cervélo have decided to create a piece of aluminum that leads the scheme to not work and to be essentially a front. The test didn't go very well however for Milan Vader who finished in 37th place: let's see if he will make up for Sunday.
Let's now see how the UCI will modify the regulation to not allow these solutions which, in our opinion, can also be dangerous by putting the frame under significant stress.
