SANTA CRUZ BLUR

RATINGS

IN THE STAND 8/10

ON THE TRAIL 7/10

OVERALL 7.5

There’s an old saying about horses for courses, and the modern mountain bike excels at offering its owner a great deal of flexibility. Sure, there are bikes that are better for gravity, and bikes that do their best work on flatter, longer hauls, but in the main, your new-school dually has a pretty wide performance envelope.

That flexibility has, however, meant that bikes at either end of the travel scale haven’t been as popular, and often haven’t garnered much attention from product planning types at bike companies.

This year, though, has been a watershed of sorts for the shorter travel all-day rig, with companies like Yeti and Intense throwing new 100mm rear-travel bikes into the mix. So, too, has Santa Cruz, which has elected to bring back one of its best-known nameplates to carry the torch for its latest lightweight 100mm-travel missile.

Officially, the bike we’re testing here is known as the Santa Cruz Blur 3 CC XX1 Reserve, but let’s just call it the Blur, shall we? With its lighter CC frame layup and a cornucopia of lightweight bits, there’s no mistaking