RAPID FIRE
JULIANA FURTADO | $8,000 X01 CC W/RESERVE 27 CARBON WHEEL UPGRADE
BIGGER-BIKE VERSATILITY IN A CLIMB-ALL-THINGS PACKAGE.
Calling a bike a ‘quiver killer’ is about as clichéd as calling it ‘vertically compliant and laterally stiff.’ So you’re not going to see that phrase here, but it’s going to take a metric crap-ton of effort not to use it.
With 130 millimeters of front-and-rear travel and a slack-enough 66.5-degree headtube angle, this bike is the kid on the playground trying to make nice between the scrawny cross-country runners and the brawny hockey players. The Furtado is light enough, especially as you go up the build ladder, but it’s not emaciated to the point where you’re afraid of riding it too hard or indulging your penchant for choosing especially crappy lines. It’s tough enough to hang with bigger bikes, but opts for an acquiescent Fox 34 Performance Elite over the bigger, beefier and at times, more mulish 36.
After our rides, we dutifully scribbled down our impressions, careful not to peek at each other’s homework. But if a teacher was going through our forms, we’d all end up in detention as we each had exactly the same comment about how the bike climbed over technical terrain—“Wow!” We anticipated a balanced skillset from a bike like this, but we were all pleasantly surprised to discover that it was one of the most capable technical climbers of the test fleet.
The XC loop is filled with IHOP-worthy stacks of ledgy climbs mixed in with rock gardens turned upward. It was in this terrain that the Furtado left us speechless (and by speechless,
