This weekend is the Australian National Championships. Keep an eye out for race coverage and results to be posted soon.

A Day in the Life: Bryn Atkinson & Jill Kintner — More Mountain Bike Photos

February 22, 2012 – On behalf of the Board of Directors, Todd McCallum, Gary Clarke, Paul Blanchette and Carl Jacobson, Team H&R BLOCK is excited to announce that Rob Britton has joined the program for the 2012 racing season.

Rob is one of the most talented up and coming riders in Canada. Last year Rob was the 2nd best North American rider at the Tour of California placing 23rd overall, 4th at Canadian National Road Championships and has had several other notable results such as, 10th at the SRAM Tour of Gila, 1st Merco Cycling Classic and 2nd Sea Otter Road Race, to mention a few.

Rob will be a strong addition to the team’s roster at such events as Tour de Beauce, Canadian Road Championships, BC Superweek and Cascade Cycling Classic. Team Director, Mark Ernsting states: “The team is growing in the right direction; each season the team continues to increase the quality of riders.  We believe that is a direct reflection of the opportunity we offer the riders”.

With the mentorship of Andrew Pinfold and the experience of Rob along with the performance of the rest of the team, this should result in the strongest season to date for the program. The team’s performance growth is a reflection of its philosophy that allows riders to attain their goals. If a rider is selected to National Team projects, has an opportunity as a guest rider on a Pro Team, or is required to fulfill academic requirements in order to further their education; the team will work hard to balance these commitments so that the rider can further their development in all aspects in order to achieve all of their aspirations.

Rob Britton will join the 2012 Team H&R BLOCK Roster of; Aaron Schooler, Adam Thuss, Andrew Pinfold, Craig Jones, Garrett McLeod, Jordan Cheyne, Justin Kerr, Kris Dahl, Laurent Dallaire and Mike Sidic.

For further information about Team H&R BLOCK please contact Team Director, Mark Ernsting – ernsting@m1sportsmanagement.com or visit the Team’s webpage at www.teamhrblock.ca

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @teamhrblock

Team H&R BLOCK partners are: H&R BLOCK – Norco Bicycles – Scotiabank – Direct Cash Income Fund – Equity Transfer & Trust Company – Stikeman Elliott LLP – Giordana – Student Price Card – BGI Graphics – Curious Communications – Mavic – Full Speed Ahead – Easton – Rudy Project – Sidi – Kenda – Fi’zi:k – Hammer Nutrition – Defeet – Contour – Yakima Racks – Minoura – Axiom – Sigma Sport – Minoura – John Henry Bikes.

Roost DH put together a promo video with some of the local trails. Have a watch and see Ben and Dan shredding the Spanish hillsides.

RoostDH – Fun in the Sun – More Mountain Bike Videos

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It was an exciting day at Dirt Norco HQ today as this years Dirt Norco team Aurum downhill bikes arrived ready for the first race in South Africa now only a few weeks away.

A big thanks to Dirt, Norco, Sram, Thomson, Schwalbe, Gamut, Kore handlebars and SunRingle for an awesome bike which we are really looking forward to racing this year. Here are some first shots as Ben’s bike gets built up.

Enjoy.

Sharing in our excitement, Decline Magazine has put together an interview with Jill in their “12 things” section. Have a read here or better yet head to your local newsstand and pick up a copy for yourself.

Download the PDF

Everyone at Norco would like to offer Duncan a warm welcome to the team and the best of luck in the coming season. We are looking forward to working with you and offering the tools in making 2012 your best season yet!

 ________

words and text below from dirt.mpora.com

We are pleased to reveal that there will be a new face in the Dirt Norco Race Team pits this year. Alongside Ben Reid and Stanny will be Duncan Riffle.

Stanny:

“Personally, riding and racing bikes is something I love to do, I know Ben is the same and we both enjoy the opportunity to do this each week, we put in the hours to make it happen and have alot of fun along the way. I know Duncan shares that same enthusiasm for the sport and works hard. With a highest world cup finish last year of 14th this clearly shows, and myself and Ben can’t wait to have Duncan on board this year.”

Duncan:

“I have known Ben and Dan since I started racing overseas really, they are two great guys with extremely positive and motivating attitudes. I know they are hard workers and obviously rippers on the bike.

I can’t express how grateful I am that they have offered me a spot on the Dirt Norco team. The new Norco Aurum DH bikes have lot of man hours of development behind them and I am very enthusiastic to see how she rides, I’ve heard amazing things. As well, being associated with a name like Dirt really is an honor, it has been a household name for me for over a decade and it’s image alone embodies the essence of downhill racing for me since the early days. I am very excited about the season of racing, road trippin’ and adventures ahead of us.”

Norco rider Angie Hohenwarter recently participated in the 2012 Fulda Challenge, which took place for the 12th time in Canada’s Northern territory of the Yukon. Together with her mixed-partner Martin Zach she finished in 4th place. This was a great accomplishment given the extreme weather conditions and high level of competition. Seven international Teams competed and “survived” in this frosty decathlon near the polar circle.

High-speed Action on Skidoos at the beginning of the competition

The Canadian Yukon territory is located right next to Alaska and is about 5 times the size of Austria. Despite the size it has a population of only 35.000 citizens and  30.000 of them live in the territories capital, Whitehorse. It was in Whitehorse that the first 4 competitions took place: Skidoo Race, Sled dragging, 20 km cross country skiing and a tire aim & shoot out of a helicopter. After a 700 km drive on dead straight roads we finally arrived at the former gold rush town of Dawson where the challenges continued with a 10 km run, a skills competition on ice, a 7 km snowshoe run and a pit saw contest. All of these events took place at a chilly 40° below zero. After that the athletes drove back to Whitehorse, where they had to cross over a canyon – crawling on a rope.

Angie and her Team partner had to go to the limits of their physical and mental capacities in order to succeed in this arduous event. “The worst was definitely the constant battle against the freezing cold, but altogether it was a great once in a lifetime experience for me and Martin. We worked great together as a team.”

Some more facts: Adding to the 10 competitions and 1500km of “polar” car journey, Angie had to travel about 22.000 km in 65 hours. A stress, which she would take on at any given time again, but the rules don’t allow her to participate for a second time.

Photos: Angie
Text: Hans Jost
Translation: Tom H.

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Reviewing Norco’s Shinobi 1 29er

For this weekend we managed to get our hands on something a little bit special, special in the fact that this is the first bike we have been lent to review and not only that, this shinny pony is currently one of not very many currently in the UK. So after Doddy from MBUK had his share and done a real review for this bike we wanted to see what it was like for ourselves.

So we all know that the wagon wheel has been around for a while, but like most things it’s taken a while to get right. After a few of years of being nothing more than a novelty, I am confident that manufacturers have started to really refine the geometry and frame design to optimise and fully exploit the larger wheels. With this in mind I had high hopes for the bikes capabilities and performance and in my opinion, now is a good time to start considering these growth disorder laden steeds as a liable option if you are of gangly stature. Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that these bikes should be reserved for taller gentlemen, but I certainly know that they don’t compliment my riding style.

Lets move on to talking about the ride of this bike as this is a review. I must point out that I am a religiously sold and devoted 26″ man. Many people call me short but I come in at a handsome 5’10″ and before moving on I need to state the following fact; we know that stature correlates directly to the suitability of wheel size (small men small wheels, big men big wheels) makes sense right? Anyway, the bike we have here is a large which felt about right for me and my long legs but I may have been better off on a medium. The first time I mounted the bike I was impressed with its ability to consume and annihilate anything in its path, although this bike only had a conservative 120mm of travel it just bumped over everything (I understood the argument).

After deciding that the bike was a great machine and a massive advance forward in 29er technology I handed it to my test subject a much more appreciating and needing tall man of 6’4″

As you can see the tall gentleman was perplexed by the normal sized wheels, he soon came around to the idea as he started riding.

Richard, my test subject solely for the reason that he is very tall quite frankly needed to come around to the idea of 29″ wheels due to his mammoth size. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly the bikes frame wasn’t quite big enough for him. My prediction was right in that tall people should really opt for a bigger wheels. See illusion below, A normal sized man on a small frame with 26″ wheels, or Richard’s ability to swamp any bike with his long limbs.

The Bike is adorned with Sram components a Sun Ringle wheelset tubeless as standard and finished off with Easton’s Haven bars and stem.

Conclusion

Effectively what we have here is a Mountain bike for tall people who sometimes like to jump if they’re feeling brave. I fully understand and appreciate the bike as a great full sus 29er but I don’t understand why you would choose it over the 26″ competition. Prejudice and bias aside it’s really great and very rideable. The componentry selection and set up is spot on with a 2 x 10 set up and Sram components throughout making for a tidy cockpit setup and a fully integrated Sram experience. Moving on to the most important component of any bike the wheels, this bike comes with a nice set of Sun Ringle straight pull wheels and what I especially like about the wheels on this bike is that they come standard as tubeless. Not mentioning suspension in this review would be stupid so, the bike comes with Fox up front and rear the front bouncers utilise Fox’s FIT cartridge giving you more control over damping than you could ever want or care about. Best of all on the rear of this full bouncer we see what could only be described as a horst link which provides a familiar progressive stroke controlled by a RP23 with three variable compression settings. All in all a great bike with a playable head-angle great componentry and very capable suspension.

A big thumbs up from me and Richard.

Andy.