Just ahead of the Leadville 100 MTB race, the 2023 defending champion and Santa Cruz HitSquad rider, Keegan Swenson, revealed his race bike on Instagram which momentarily broke the mountain bike internet - Instagram Post
The ongoing heckle amongst pro and privateer alike is whether the latest breed of "engineered flex" hardtails are faster than full suspension bikes or their "in-betweener" flex-stay counterparts. Much the same as riders on the sharp end of the results list are polarised in their opinion on regular vs dropper seatposts, but there has been little to no debate (or even thought) given towards regular vs drop (think road bike) handlebars until the recent spate of ultra endurance events have forced riders into thinking about riding position, comfort, and most importantly... aerodynamics. And with all the hype on wind tunnel testing in the pro tour teams, we're seeing the occurrence of drop handlebars showing up more and more.
Holding the current Leadville 100 course record at 5:43:31, Swenson went all in for 2024 and adopted the drop bar trend in a risky attempt to defend and beat his current record. Last year, he annihilated the previous record, 5:58:35, set by Alban Lakata in 2015. But, of course, Swenson wasn’t satisfied. He was convinced he could drop that number even more. While most pro men can’t seem to break the 6-hour mark, Swenson is whittling away at his race setup to figure out how he can break under the 5:40 mark.
His bike for this year revealed a seriously unique approach to his thinking with an interesting mix of road bike and mountain bike components to survive the abuse that the 100 mile event tolls out, but giving him every possible advantage on the downhills where being "faster" often comes down less to the watts that you're putting out and more to the WHAT? that you're putting in. In this case his WHAT? was a medium Santa Cruz Highball CC frame with a 100 mm RockShox SID SL Ultimate fork, SRAM Red levers mated to Level Ultimate brakes, 160mm rotors, XXSL Transmission drivetrain, and an XPLR 42 chainring with 10-52t in the back. He ran Reserve Wheel 28s on DT Swiss 180 hubs and Maxxis Aspen ST 170 TPI 2.4 tyres.
All in all, this bike was ridiculously light and made to do things some might say are dangerous.
So what happened?
Unfortunately, Swenson got an early flat in the race on Powerline and had to ride his Maxxis / Reserve combo longer than anyone ought to ever consider with a flat rear tyre. In a post-race interview he admitted that he was "taking some risks—pushing the pace—and didn’t see a rock in a puddle from earlier rain".
During his ordeal with the rear flat Swenson fell back to 14th place, but then got a replacement wheel and started putting down the watts. Biting down hard he managed to regain his lead, but with the time he lost riding the flat rear wheel the record was all but a dream. He did however manage to cross the finishline in first with a massive lead over the rest of the field making us all scratch our heads and wonder "what if...?"/
This year, Swenson’s time was 5:49:08, fast enough to beat every previous record other than his own, 15 minutes ahead of second place John Gaston who was followed by Cole Paton in third.
