The Biking Hub: Mountain

Sneak peeks » Cory

2006 Giant Anthem and Glory

Giant Bicycles is one of the world’s largest bicycle manufacturers and they’ve always done a decent job putting together high quality rides and making them available at very competitive prices. Bikes like the Giant NRS and the DH Comp (and Team) are stalwarts on the cross country and downhill racing scenes across the world. Combined with Giant’s freeride, all mountain, and trail bikes built around the Maestro suspension platform, the company has put together an excellent range of bikes for the demanding cyclist.

The NRS has been around for years and is well loved, but with last year’s introduction of the Giant Trance there was rampant speculation that the NRS’ days were numbered. Now come images out of Expocycle of what looks like the replacement for Giant’s flagship xc bike. The Giant Anthem takes the Maestro platform and uses it on a short travel frame. Of course, time will tell if the Anthem is a worthy replacement for the NRS, but for the time being, Giant looks like they’ve got a sexy rig waiting for consumers in 2006.

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, the well-received Giant Team DH was being tested with a Maestro equipped platform. At Expocycle in Montreal, Giant formally unveiled the Glory. The Glory makes use of the aforementioned Maestro suspension platform to provide downhillers with what will likely be a solid performer on the DH circuit. While I’m curious to see how the relatively exposed shock mount holds up to rock gardens and general abuse, I’m sure the bike will pedal like a champ.

I’ve pedalled a couple of Maestro-based bikes around parking lots in my area and they were amazing. If either of these bikes perform in the same way, Giant has a pair of winners headed towards the podium.

Update (29 September 2005): CyclingNews.com spent some time on the Giant Anthem at the Dirt Demo at Interbike. The Anthem sounds like, how do I put this, an interesting ride, although I’m not sure it’s something I’d choose for a daily bike — the Trance seems like it would be more fun to ride regularly.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 at 11:31 am and is filed under Sneak peeks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.