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Words: Guy Kesteven || Photo: Sven Martin

Technology has never evolved faster than it is right now, rapidly reducing exotic or impossible inventions to everyday items that we’ll be juking as out of date within a couple of years. But, wherever you look, there’s one thing that drives that evolution, and it’s fancy folk dropping cash on the latest gear. Not because they need it or even understand it, but because they can, and they want to, whether that’s to flex at the trailhead or get a warm and fuzzy feeling that they deserve it. And at this point, almost every forum thread below the latest £10k+ bike or new exotic tech launch starts ranting about dentists and price raping.

But hang on there, haters, whatever you’re pulling in as a weekly wage, your pitchfork mob mentality risks scaring off the posh folk who’ve made mountain biking far, far better now than it was when I started. Yeah, OK, so I dropped the ‘eee, you don’t know how lucky you are’ bomb, but suck it up, kids, it’s relevant here. Or at least I think so, and I’m writing and you’re reading, so cope or turn the page.

TBT to when converting your ATB for downhill meant taking the bar ends off (don’t even think of dropping your saddle, though), and I learnt the whole ‘posh people make the world go round’ lesson working in the local bike shop.

While it sounds like a caricature, we regularly anticipated one customer’s appearances at the shop, waiting with the kind of lip to floor drool anticipation of a dog tied up outside the butchers. Because when his Rolls Royce (I kid you not) pulled up, we knew our dreams were about to turn into reality. Before the shop doorbell had even swung far enough to ring, we’d whip out the NTI ‘special things’ catalogue from under the counter and have our finger locked into the phone dial, ready to ring through the order – usually an order of things so rare and precious in their neon and anodised colours that we’d only seen them as previews in that month’s magazines. But because of Mr Royce (as he was universally known), in a few days, we’d be tearing open a box and holding them for real. Then I’d watch Mike (I couldn’t be trusted) bolt them carefully onto the customer’s Merlin custom titanium hardtail with religious reverence ready for the next Woodbury Common race. (In those races, no matter how badly your day went, you could still rely on lapping Mr Royce at least twice without any worry of denting his kid-at-Christmas elation as he wobbled between the gorse bushes and teetered over the edge of the bombhole.)

My shop pal Stevie hated Mr Royce for it. Properly purple-faced rage for what he saw as wasting this wonderful kit by just pottering around at a pace that wouldn’t even trouble a theoretical 50mm of travel and inevitably lopsided cantilever brakes. Or he did until I pointed out just how much better Mr Royce made life for everyone.

Not only did we get to see our dream gear first hand without buying it, but when Mr Royce upgraded to RS-1s and Magura hydraulic brakes, who do you think were circling like vultures to make him an offer on the barely used cast-offs? There was never a better time to ask Rich, the shop owner, for a deal on kit than in the afterglow of a visit from Mr Royce. Sometimes Rich would even treat us to a fish and chip lunch. And because Mr Royce and others like him bought the first version of XTR

• with high-tech trigger shifters and V-brakes.
• that paid for the costs sunk into its research and development, soon we got underbar shifters on affordable LX and M600 V-brakes.

Twenty-five years later, nothing has changed. So, while £10k RockShox Flight Attendant bikes are way beyond most budgets, Fox Live Valve just trickled down from Factory only to Performance Elite spec, and SRAM AXS has already dribbled down from XX1 through X01 to GX, and Canyon’s alloy Spectral has sicker geometry than the Carbon one (it’s only 1° steeper on the seat tube, but I’m trying to make a point here, OK?). We need the inventors, tinkerers, race mechanics and brand managers to create the smart sparks in the first place, but it’s always money that fans the flames.

Rather than wasting your energy jabbing jealousy into a keyboard, make the most of the fact your Deore gears are now 12-speed and the brakes are four-cylinder. Or save your screen from venomous spittle and savour the fact that if you want to go wireless, the electrical internals of GX AXS are the same as XX1. Because sometimes you get better savings making more of the same quality than making worse stuff.

If you’re determined to try and punishment-pass the next person you see dropping into a trail running full factory spec, I hope they turn out to be a sponsored pro or a steezy van-lifer who puts every meagre penny they own into the pure pleasure of running a sick rig to the absolute max of its potential. Because, whether you’re Mrs Royce or Mr Rolls-out-pizza-for-a-living, the bottom line is that it’s skills you need to pay those trail bills, not flashy cash dollar.

by Guy Kesteven, a professional bike tester and journalist.

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