His stealthy new MTB brand, Vampire, offers 3 bikes in 1
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 11 February 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chris Canfield's company, Suspension Formulas, develops and licenses mountain bike suspension designs used by brands including Revel and Canfield Bikes. Now he's launching his own bike brand, Vampire Bikes while also continuing to race DH at the Masters level.
- In 2019 you won the UCI Masters World Championship at Mont St. Anne when you were in your 40s. What's allowed you to be so fast for so long?
- How much of DH racing is about equipment vs. rider?
- Did you get involved in building bikes out of necessity, or was it something you really enjoyed from the beginning?
- Tell us about the Canfield Balance Formula suspension design. Is it primarily focused on pedal efficiency? What does "controlled braking" mean?
- Is designing suspension for a DH bike easier in some ways since you aren't as concerned about pedal efficiency?
- CF3 is a newer, patent pending suspension design. How is that different from CBF?
- With the expiration of the original DW Link patent, does this open opportunities for new designs and/or improvements?
- Is it difficult working with bike brands as a suspension designer? Does your design end up getting compromised in some ways?
- What does the Vampire Bikes customer look like?
- What do you make of recent news about athletes launching their own bike brands? What do you think is driving this?
You can follow along with the launch of Vampire Bikes on Instagram @vampire_bikes and learn more about some of the suspension designs we discussed at suspension-formulas.com.
--Keep up with the latest in mountain biking at Singletracks.com and on Instagram @singletracks
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Something unexpected has arrived in Happy Meal. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Hello Kitty and friends are teaming up for the ultimate collab. |
| 0:08.3 | Joining your little ones on a fun-fueled adventure. Some fun, some food, it's all inside this happy meal. |
| 0:16.3 | Until the 2nd of February from 11am includes one pre-selected book or toy whilst it's last. |
| 0:20.1 | Hey everybody, welcome to the single tracks podcast. |
| 0:23.2 | My name is Jeff, and today my guest is Chris Canfield. |
| 0:27.2 | Chris's company's suspension formulas develops and licenses mountain bike suspension designs used by brands, including Revell and Canfield Bikes. |
| 0:35.8 | Now he's launching his own bike brand, vampire bikes, |
| 0:38.5 | while also continuing to race downhill at the master's level. |
| 0:42.5 | Thanks for joining me, Chris. |
| 0:44.4 | Hey, thanks for having me, Jeff. |
| 0:46.0 | So I wanted to start by talking about your downhill racing background. |
| 0:50.4 | So you raced at the pro and elite level for many years. And then in 2019, you won the UCI |
| 0:57.9 | Masters World Championship at Mount St. Ann when I believe you were in your 40s. So what's allowed you to |
| 1:05.7 | be so fast for so long? I have no idea. It's not like I don't have injuries or whatever. I just love it. I mean, |
| 1:13.8 | if I could be between the tape, like honestly, every couple of days, I'd be happy. I mean, |
| 1:19.5 | there's a race series up in BC for the BC Cups where they do a back to back to back, a weekend race, |
| 1:25.9 | a Wednesday race, and then another weekend race so that |
| 1:29.3 | people don't have to travel so much. And it was the most fun I've ever had in my life because |
| 1:33.7 | it was like get done with race and have one day of travel and start practice all over again. |
| 1:38.4 | I was like, I could do this the rest of my life. This would be so much fun. Wow. Wow. I mean, |
| 1:43.4 | are you, what do you enjoy about it? Are you like a really |
| 1:45.8 | competitive person or like what is it about racing that you find so fun? I guess I'm competitive. |
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