While Emily Batty is well known for being ‘the pretty blonde girl who rides for Trek’, she also happens to be a great XC rider with some good results to her name, including a 5th place at the Mont St Anne World U23 Championships this year. For that race she was riding a special bike – not only the new 2011 Trek Top Fuel, but a special version of it. Here’s a quick snoop around it. (Click on photos to enlarge them).
Emily in the sunshine of Brian Head, Utah. Batty is always very well turned-out and never rides without nail varnish!As well as a custom paint (or lack of it) job, Emily's carbon frame was made a few layers thinner to save weight - and because she doesn't weigh a great deal herself.You know you've made it when...How's this for trick? Trek made a one-piece carbon fibre bar and stem for Emily's Worlds bike. Alloy topcap bolt and carbon top cap. You can see where the cables and hose enter the headtube for neat and quietness.Bontrager sponge grips weigh very little. The bike has two Fox lockout bar controls: one for the forks and another for the rear shock, both with instant release.XC racers still use bar ends and these ones are about as minimal (and again, as light) as it gets.New 2011 XTR transmission and brakes. It's odd seeing a lack of stem bolts.Emily and John Riley (who's also a handy rider) Product Manager for mountain bikes. Trek does a lot of listening to the feedback from its racers.Chilling out at the Trek Launch - Tracy Moseley, Emily Batty and John Riley. At 21, Emily is poised for a long rise to the top of her field, but she's still happy to take advice from other riders like Tracy Moseley, who's just raced her 13th World Championships.
With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)
No comment required, I think…..
CFH would like to have a quick snoop round Emily Batty, I would imagine.