Extremely light yet super tough, mountain bikes have undergone a high-tech metamorphosis since the “horrible” days when the likes of Cadel Evans used to hump a heavy aluminium work horse along a dirt track.

The new bikes, weighing less than 10 kilograms with the frames built to withstand any sort of abuse a rider can dish out, have already helped Australian riders like junior world champion and Commonwealth Games hopeful Cameron Wright achieve more than Evans did on a mountain bike.

Evans, the 2011 Tour de France champion, rode similar sorts of two-wheelers in the 1990’s during his early days as a mountain biker.

Former mountain bike competitor Donna Dall, who now coaches Wright, said new generation mountain bikes were remarkably different from the “awful” beast she had to race 20-odd years ago.

“It was horrible,” Dall said of her old bike.

“I’ve got one in the roof and I’ll bring it down occasionally and have a ride on it and it just feels awful, and I cannot believe the feats that people like Cadel Evans used to do on those bikes — just amazing.”

Dall described new mountain bikes as phenomenal, saying they allowed riders to push the boundaries more than ever before.

They are made of specially engineered carbon fibre, weigh less than a small child and are designed, optimised and tested using computer programs that fine tune aerodynamics and performance.

“They’ve changed incredibly,” Dall said.

Source
ABC News