It is always good to see manufacturers stand behind their product and provide support at races for everyone, not just the pros. Especially at a race like World Championships, where not every rider is riding for a big budget factory team. Lets have a closerA�look at the Mavic set up.
The Mavic mechanics ran us through their week at World Champs and what they are up to. They take care of cross country and 4X riders as well as the downhillers.
What is Mavic providing this week?We are providing full factoryA�wheel support for Mavic teams as well as wheel support for privateer racers who don’t have mechanics.
Is this free of charge?For the Mavic teams it is free, for any privateers it is provided at minimum cost, normally some sort of payment to help cover materials.
For the downhill teams whatA�is the most common mechanical work you do? We change over the rims (when they become damaged), we check and adjust the spoke tension for riders, some riders want more or less tension.
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What events does Mavic attend? All the World Cups and the big events in Europe (and World Champs).
The truck looks well decked out, whats on board?All the individual parts for repairs, spare rims, truing stands and we have some standard spokes for building up/repairing Mavic wheels using other (non-Mavic) hubs). We try to help all the riders.
How many mechanics travel with the truck? Normally 2 but for World Champs we have 3.
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Who is the hardest rider on wheels? Brook MacDonald.
Why is that, his style or weight or? I don’t know! His style?!
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You may be surprised to know that all riders ride stock wheels, not even factory riders will race with prototypes. All the prototype wheels are given to test riders or tried between races, once they have past all the Mavic testing requirements they will be used by the factory riders. Logical really, this ensures there are no failures at races that could cost riders positions. The only downhillA�rider not using standard wheels is Fabien Barel, he uses a combination of the Deemax wheels with lighter Deetrax hubs.
It was a little surprising to see no wheelsets were prebuilt sitting ready to go, rather, theyA�are all made to order when required. As you could imagine at times thisA�can leave the wheel-builders with a lot of work to do at some racess. It is nice to know ‘hand built’ still applies to some things in life and it allows the mechanics to customise the build upA�to some extent.A�
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Whilst we didin’t find any mega prototype carbon downhill wheels (there were some prototypeA�XC wheels lurking in the truck though) it was very interesting to see how a company like Mavic looks after its riders and takes its racing seriously! Thanks to the Mavic guys for the tour, it was easy toA�understand why the truck is a favoured hang outA�among the racers.
Very Interesting.
Yeah, the Mavic guy’s at World Champs were fantastic & helped out Ben enormously with wheel builds & problem solving – cannot thank them enough!