GT Sensor

The Sensor is GT’s all-new trail bike platform filling the gap between the 100mm travel Marathon bikes and the 150mm Sanction models. Unfortunately, weight and restrictive handling are not on its side.

Ride & handling: Excellent traction but no speed demon
The major downside of the Sensor's complex frame is the high weight, creating a deficit of a couple of pounds over the lightest comparably specced and suspended bikes. This means despite a relatively long, XC-style position and a firm feel from the small volume Boost Valve-equipped Fox shock, it’s not a naturally eager accelerator or speed holder on long stretches. The long stem and narrow bar plus noticeable twist from the front end make it less confident on steeper descents or in tight technical situations too.

Where it does shine is slow, steep climbs. Here, high levels of traction from the I-Drive set-up offset the weight to crawl tenaciously over the most testing crux moves with impressive surefootedness. The steady steering set-up and a relatively steep seat angle keeps weight forward for excellent front wheel connection when you’re clawing your way upwards.

The high pivot point for the rear swingarm gives a distinctive up and back wheel path that combines with the BV shock and semi-isolated drivetrain to handle big flat-faced strikes and block wallops surprisingly well too. The same applies to the 15mm screw-thru axle Fox 120mm fork – although our sample came with a 2009 unit, not the 2010 FIT cartridge damper version.

The Sensor has outstanding traction and big-hit capability for a 120mm bike. It’s very heavy though, and the technically tenacious suspension doesn’t mesh well with the restricted leverage cockpit. It’s low on UK practicality and the loosening bearings on our sample were a worry.

Frame & equipment: Ringing the changes with a new design
GT has been using the I-Drive system with a separate crank-carrying subframe linked to rear swingarm and mainframe for 13 years. The Sensor is a totally new frame though, with hydroformed triple butted tubeset and trademark penetrated top tube/seat tube junction. Clamp-in bearings under the CNC machined ‘film reel’ covers facilitate easy tightening and replacement.

They rattled loose very quickly on our test sample, though, which doesn’t bode at all well for long-term reliability. GT has also used a conventional head tube rather than a stiffer tapered steerer style, and there’s a front mech on a short stub pipe instead of a Direct Mount’style.

There’s no convenient bottle mount, and the barrel adjuster for the cable is mounted on a mud-collecting, tyre clearance-limiting crossbridge as well. It’s well priced for a full suite of Shimano XT kit, though.

from bikeradar.

Sam Pilgrim wins Leogang White Style

British dirt jumper Sam Pilgrim won the White Style event in Leogang, Austria on Friday night, in a competition that was dominated by Europe’s best top riders.

Sweden’s Linus Sjöholm took second place ahead of Frenchman Yannick Granieri on the course built from snow and designed by Grant ‘Chopper’ Fielder. UK rider Sam Reynolds finished in eighth place, ahead of fellow Brit Fielder in ninth.

The course started with an igloo, then a set of two doubles, two massive bowls with a 15ft drop and a final 40ft double. More than 2,000 spectators watched the ice-cold action.

Pilgrim blazed the finals with a tailwhip at the start, frontflip at the first double, backflip no hander at the second, 360 X-up out of the fruit bowl, tuck no-hander and backflip at the second bowl, and a backflip table at the last jump.

He said: “Crashing on snow isn't that funny, because it’s much harder than you might think. It took me a bit to cope with it when I competed the first time at the White Style, but man, it was fun this year and Chopper did a really great job. Big respect!”
Results

1. Sam Pilgrim (GBr)
2. Linus Sjöholm (Swe)
3. Yannick Granieri (Fra)
4. Amir Kabbani (Ger)
5. Darren Berrecloth (Can)
6. Cameron McCaul (USA)
7. Jamie Goldman (USA)
8. Sam Reynolds (GBr)
9. Grant Fielder (GBr)
10. Niki Leitner (Aut)
11. Martin Söderström (Swe)
12. Jakub Vencl (Cze)

source : bikeradar

Riding is My Ritalin

Adam Leibovitz is conducting a startling, risky and groundbreaking experiment that could transform the way doctors treat ADHD: He's pedaling his bicycle

By Bruce Barcott

One evening in the late autumn of 1997, Jeff and Lori Leibovitz arrived at Skiles Test Elementary School in Indianapolis for a meeting with their son Adam's first-grade teacher. The Leibovitzes were upbeat. First-grade conferences are typically full of wonderful reports about children's wonderful progress in learning to read and write. But the Leibovitzes walked into Adam's classroom that night to find the assistant principal sitting with Adam's teacher. The assistant principal did most of the talking. She told them their son showed classic signs of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD: He had trouble sitting still in class; his focus pinballed around the room; his hands were a whirl of perpetual motion. Adam's teacher had taken to giving him rubber bands to occupy his busy fingers.

Jeff and Lori listened in shock. Adam was a rambunctious kid, but his behavior didn't strike them as unusual. Adam's ADHD wasn't extreme or debilitating, the assistant principal told the Leibovitzes. But that wasn't necessarily a good thing. The boy's condition was acute enough to cause learning problems but mild enough that he'd likely slip through the system's safety net for special-needs students.

"It was a horror story," Lori recalls. "Here was our oldest child, just starting school, and we're told that he's always going to struggle with this. They said he'd fall through the cracks and would never amount to anything. It was earthshaking."

At the time, ADHD diagnoses were exploding across the United States. From 1990 to 1998 the number of children and adults identified as having the disorder shot up from 900,000 to nearly five million. Jeff and Lori came home that night and plunged into the research. Lori read everything she could find and attended local support-group meetings. Most of the advice pointed in one direction: a prescription for amphetamines such as Ritalin. The powerful stimulants (the Food and Drug Administration labels them as Schedule II drugs, the same category as morphine and methamphetamine) have a paradoxical calming effect on the minds of ADHD patients. They're convenient, effective and popular—90 percent of ADHD patients who take them see improvement. Pop a pill; problem solved. Many parents swore by them. Teachers praised them for bringing calm to unruly classrooms.

But the Leibovitzes were reluctant to go that route. They were leery of the side effects, which can include heart palpitations, sleeplessness, dizziness, irritability, headaches and nausea. For the next three years, they opted instead to give Adam and his younger brother plenty of exercise. "We always had a lot of running-around time," Lori says.

Adam became a high-energy kid who was also very bright. By fourth grade, though, the demands of schoolwork began to outrun his ability to keep his ADHD in check. The experience was like having a motion detector wired into his brain. "Every little movement or sound would catch my attention," he says. "If I caught a glimpse of somebody walking past the classroom door, my mind would latch onto that: 'Who's out in the hall? What are they doing out there?'"

His parents worried that he wouldn't keep up. "As he grew older, every year he'd be expected to concentrate a little harder and sit a little longer in his seat," his mother says. "When it came time to do his homework, he'd be rolling around under the table or running into the next room. He'd shout out the answers to us. He always knew the answers. He just couldn't sit still to write them down."

from bicycling.com