How much suspension for dual slalom?

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Lee,

I was wondering what you thought the best dual slalom bike set up would be for courses like Sea Otter, Mount Snow, Snowshoe and other courses that have rough terrain and lots of flat turns.

I noticed Brian Lopes pulled out the dually for Sea Otter. The main thing I’m wondering about is travel. Would a shorter travel bike setup for mountain cross work well or would you be better off with something like a 5 X 5? Or is that overkill. Thank you. Still loving the site.

Christopher

Hey Christopher,

On rough courses with flat turns, dual suspension hooks up better and lets you carry more speed than a hardtail.

Most slalom bikes these days have four inches of travel. That’s a good compromise between traction and responsiveness. Specialized SX, Intense Tazer, etc.

A 5×5 will still rip if you set it up stiff and with lots of pedal platform/low speed compression. My Enduro is awesome in jumps and slalom — it has so much hookup — but it’s nowhere as quick as my SX. Braaap.

I hope that helps. Rip it!

– Lee

2 replies
  1. Nick says:

    I just got an old school Tazer, brand new because I felt like the VPP cornering was lacking. I run it with an air shock at 3.5 inches and then an air/coil DJ2 up front with 100mm of travel. It is enough to take the edged off of jumps that don’t go quite perfect and it hooks in the corners so much better than my hardtail did. Go with suspension, but not much.

  2. Ryan says:

    one of my friends runs a heckler with a full on coil 5th element, he took 2nd in the sea otter slalom so it seems to work

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