He competed in the first Rampage, and today his bike brand is beloved by riders
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2024
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lance Canfield is a mechanical engineer and former professional mountain bike racer who drew his first mountain bike design in 1996. Today his bike brand, Canfield Bikes, sells mountain bikes and components designed and tested in Poncha Springs, Colorado.
- What were downhill bikes like when you began racing in 1994? What did you want to improve about your bike?
- Your first bike design in 1999, the Big Fat Fatty Fat, had 12 inches of travel front and rear. How did that work?
- You competed on some of your own bikes in Red Bull Rampage, including at the first competition ever in 2001. What was it like? How did it compare to today's spectacle?
- Why do you think there aren't many (any?) dedicated freeride bikes on the market today?
- What makes the Canfield Balance Formula (CBF) suspension design different from others on the market?
- Is CBF better suited for certain applications or travel ranges?
- Why are you such a proponent of shorter cranks for mountain biking?
- How has Canfield been affected by industry supply fluctuations over the past few years?
- What's next for Canfield? Which mountain bike developments or trends have you excited about the future?
Visit canfieldbikes.com to see the bikes and components discussed in this episode.
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
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| 0:59.0 | Adobe.com. Hey everybody, welcome to the single tracks podcast. My name is Jeff and today my guest is |
| 1:06.0 | Lance Canfield. Lance is a mechanical engineer and former professional mountain bike racer who drew his first |
| 1:13.6 | mountain bike design in 1996. Today, his bike brand Canfield Bikes sells mountain bikes and components |
| 1:21.3 | designed and tested in Poncha Springs, Colorado. Thanks for joining me, Lance. Yeah, my pleasure. |
| 1:28.3 | Thanks for having me. Lance. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. |
| 1:29.3 | So you first started racing downhill bikes in 1994. |
| 1:34.3 | What were the bikes like back then? |
| 1:36.3 | A lot of the bikes were built kind of like a road bike using road bike tubing. |
| 1:43.3 | They were incredibly underbuilt. |
| 1:45.7 | They were quite bad. |
| 1:47.6 | Full suspension was fairly new. |
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