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Author Kristen Gross rips local So-Cal trails. Photo by Jake Orness.
By the time I came around to the women specific side of mountain biking, the bikes had already done a lot of growing up. I remember when they were first introduced. It really felt like an exciting time to be a woman in the sport—until you started scanning the specs on those early models. Their upright riding positions raised my eyebrows, and made me wonder if the bike manufacturers knew something I didn’t. And then I saw the components list, and my glee at receiving the focused attention of the industry quickly evaporated into a feeling of even deeper exclusion—these bikes looked like the place where leftover parts went to die; weird combinations of derailleurs, brakes, cassettes and pedals that no one would ever put on a wish list. Choosing a women’s specific mountain bike meant choosing less, or second best. I shook my head and moved on, riding a couple race rigs from the “regular” lines of major manufacturers before women’s specific designs found me again.
The shop I was riding for then, Sweet Pete’s in Toronto, Canada, was well-represented by other teammates on two out of the three brands the store carried (Kona and Giant). Sweet Pete’s asked me if I would be willing to choose my next bike from its third brand, Trek. After seeing the amount of innovation and thought Trek had put into its Top Fuel line up, I was sold. The shop owner, Pete, showed me the Women’s Specific Design (WSD) version of the Top Fuel 9.8 and when I saw its shiny black coat with hot pink racing stripes, I was nearly ready to pull the trigger on color alone. I checked out the specs next and I was thrilled to find that it was the exact same build as the “men’s version”— full Shimano XT with Fox suspension, all decorating a carbon frame. My excitement was back. “But what about the geometry?” I asked Pete, worried I’d be pushed into an upright (read: not racy) position. He said it had the exact same geometry and frame as the regular 9.8. He told me that over time, Trek had found that female athletes who spend a lot of time training and racing actually don’t need that shortened top tube. All they really need is a good fit and a saddle that works for them.
I raced that Trek for two years and flipped it before its third season. I promptly ordered up the current year’s Top Fuel 9.8 WSD to replace it. I still race that bike, even though it’s a 2011 with a lot of miles, 26-inch wheels and a triple chain ring — practically blasphemy in the bike industry these days. But I can’t let it go, especially now that Trek isn’t making its Top Fuel line anymore—my 2011 WSD model was the last of its kind.
Gross puttin' out wattage. Photo by Morgan Edwards.
I love my bike because to me, it’s what women’s specific ought to be. First of all, it’s light. In general, the more you spend on a bike, the more you save on weight, and for a woman, that’s more than a drop in the bucket. It’s a question of biology, math and physics: women develop less power to weight than men. Nonetheless, women’s specific bikes have historically featured lower-end, heavier componentry and frames, making them more difficult for a woman to ride and enjoy. The bikes ride them, rather than the other way around. Not so with my Top Fuel and others of its ilk. It’s a proper carbon race bike that happens to come in a lovely paint job and two additional sizes (14.5 and 16.5) to accommodate petite ladies.
It’s got no-nonsense, aggressive geometry that helps me climb almost anything, while feeling stable and capable on the way down. I augmented its positive attributes by getting a pro fit. For anyone thinking about purchasing a new bike, I recommend including a couple hundred dollars in your bike budget for this life-changing investment. You will more than make it up with savings from avoided physiotherapy (and prize money thanks to all the wattage you’ll unlock).
“There are performance details you can’t see by just looking at someone on their bike, whether mountain or road,” explains Aaron Hauck, owner and operator of Inner Strength Fitt Labs Training Systems, and Fit Specialist at San Diego Sports Medicine. “I measure everything—feet, legs, hips, spine, shoulders and arms—to get perfect cleat placement, saddle fore/aft position, saddle height/tilt, stem rise/length, and handlebar position to make the bike an extension of the cyclist. Optimal joint-loading limits are dependent on your own unique skeletal and muscular anatomy so I also evaluate each rider for a real understanding of compression, shearing, and tension in order to help prevent wear and tear. Less wasted motion means less wear, less wobble, and less pain.”
Aboard the trusty Giant Lust Advanced. Photo by
Jake Orness.
With the growth of female participation in mountain biking, the latest women’s specific bikes continue to evolve. This year at Interbike, Giant’s booth made a big impression on me with its Liv line. Lust Advanced, Giant’s race-ready full-suspension rig, really stands out with high-end spec (including SRAM’s XX1, with 30-tooth crankset for women versus 34 for men) on a carbon frame with 27.5-inch wheels and a sassy paint job. The Lust is based on the same technology and frame geometry as Giant’s popular Anthem series, but with a few little gives and takes. For example, on a medium frame, the head angle is half a degree more on a Lust than on an Anthem. The top tube is 0.2 inches shorter on the Lust, while the head tube is 0.4 inches longer. It also comes with a 0.4-inch shorter wheelbase and a one-inch-shorter standover height.
Specialized is offering its prize pony for the ladies—the S-Works Fate Carbon 29, a hardtail “no-compromise” world cup XC race bike. It comes ready to rip with a full-XTR build and a ladies-only geometry based off the same thinking as Giant’s—the average woman has a proportionally shorter torso and longer legs than the average man.
And then I saw the components list, and my glee at receiving the focused attention of the industry quickly evaporated into a feeling of even deeper exclusion—these bikes looked like the place where leftover parts went to die; weird combinations of derailleurs, brakes, cassettes and pedals that no one would ever put on a wish list. Choosing a women’s specific mountain bike meant choosing less, or second best.
However,
everyone is different—there are men who have short torsos and women who have long torsos. We all come in different shapes and sizes, that’s why it’s important for women new to the sport to understand they don’t have to limit themselves to the “appropriate” section of the catalog—women’s specific bikes are a great option, but not the only option.
One of the things that will help you become a proficient mountain bike rider with great handling skills is to bring your center of gravity down. The lower you can go, the more stable you will be. Naturally, the laws of gravity apply equally to men and women. One of the ways you can get lower is to get longer, so an experienced woman (even with an on-average shorter torso) will benefit from being lengthened over a regular top tube. That seems to be the thinking behind the Scott and Norco offerings for women, and the thinking behind my beloved Top Fuel—past the intermediate skill level, both male and female athletes are looking for the same things.
Climbing away aboard the Giant Lust. Photo by
Jake Orness.
With Scott, the “Contessa” moniker added to a number of its offerings indicates a build that includes women’s specific contact points on the saddle, bars and grips and a more female-friendly paint job. Notably, Scott doesn’t offer Contessa models in 29—27.5 is where the brand has planted its women’s specific flag. Norco offers some of its lower-end XC bikes with the moniker “Forma,” in all three wheel sizes. As with Scott, these frames are the same as the regular offerings, but with women’s specific saddles, bars and grips.
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“We don’t have a women’s specific model for our higher-end bikes, such as the Sight, but we do design our bikes to have equal ride characteristics for all sizes of riders,” explains Dustan Sept, Communications and Marketing Supervisor at Norco Bicycles. “One of our key design features is what we call gravity tune. Within the front triangle of a Sight, for example, we’re able to change the chain stay length according to each size bike. A small bike is going to have shorter chain stay length than a large bike, which means that whether someone is five feet two inches or six feet, their center of gravity is going to fall in the same place. So the bike is going to handle the same for all sizes of riders.“
Kelli Emmett charging out of the sunset. Photo by Jake Orness.
Finally, there’s Santa Cruz. Mountain biking legend Juliana Furtado has long had a model of her namesake included in the Santa Cruz line up. Just over a year ago, she took it to the next level, starting Juliana Bicycles, which only offers women’s bikes. As a sister to Santa Cruz, each Juliana model is based on a popular original. The Juliana Furtado is a repainted 5010. The new Roubion is a Bronson. The Joplin is a Tall Boy, and so on. Each one is fitted with a women’s specific Juliana saddle, and the proprietary Juliana handlebar and slim grips—which are only 25 millimeters in diameter—definitely stand out. If Juliana Furtado — decorated world champ, and national treasure — says that’s all you need to make a bike ready for ladies who shred, I believe her. With a total of six similarly modified models to offer, the Juliana Bicycle Company is especially women’s specific in one meaningful way: Marketing.
A fleet of Julianas descend. Photo by Will Ockelton.
Remember what catalogs used to look like? Big, cheesy smiles in a studio with every sock, sweater set, and trouser laid out in grids, complete with order form in the back? The marketers that speak to women from the fashion industry—a very powerful, insightful chorus, I would argue—still send a catalog. But today they call it a “look book” and each one is themed and styled with models, carefully selected pieces from the latest collection and far-flung locales, all captured by an editorial-style photographer. The look book is designed to make you want to be the people in the pictures, not just have their clothes. They sell ideas and lifestyles just as much as clothing and accessories.
The Juliana brand does the same thing. It shows women on epic adventures at the tops of mountains, getting out of helicopters, railing corners, and riding off into the sunset. The website is full of images with golden-hour drenched sunlight and women ripping. The images help women feel like mountain biking is for us too, and in a much more meaningful way than a cute paint job (though they definitely have those) or a slightly narrower grip, or a saddle that accommodates a woman’s anatomy.
As a racer, I can’t help but notice the low turnout at my local start lines, but I think it’s because women see mountain biking the way Juliana Bicycles does: A way to connect with each other, have adventures, challenge themselves, see beautiful things—and that doesn’t necessarily mean racing. Juliana Bicycles is active on social media, reaching more and more women, and encouraging them to share photos of themselves riding their way through contests like #MyRoubion. They make you want to go on a ride with them, and I think that’s a good thing for women, and the sport.
As more women rise through the ranks—whether as beginning riders, community organizers, or industry mavens—I can’t wait to see how we’ll continue to make mountain biking our own. Bikes are only the beginning.
Women’s specific designs have come a long way but one thing that hasn’t changed is that each of us—male or female—needs a bike that fits correctly. For the average woman, a women’s specific design like Giant’s or Specialized’s with a slightly shorter top tube may be just the ticket. But a top tube is far from the only way to achieve a good fit. Women need not be shy about trying out the men’s bikes and experimenting with stem lengths and saddle position. The important points to remember if you’re a woman shopping for a bike are that lighter is better (even more than if you’re a guy), a pro fit will help you dial your bike in properly, and just because the marketing says you need a shorter top tube (or a different seat tube angle or a shorter wheelbase) you don’t need to blindly follow.
What the marketing is good for is welcoming more females into a sport that is still a bit of a boys’ club full of camo prints, baggy clothes, dirty jokes, and peer pressure—not that we ladies mind that stuff. But as more women rise through the ranks—whether as beginning riders, community organizers, or industry mavens—I can’t wait to see how we’ll continue to make mountain biking our own. Bikes are only the beginning.
