Specialized athletes have been seen out and about on what appears to be a new Epic race bike, with Sina Frei and Victor Koretzky riding an as-yet unreleased cross-country bike. We’ve also seen various posts with Peter Sagan riding what looks to be the new bike.
While speculation suggests the team was riding a new Epic EVO (understandable, because last season many of their racers were riding the EVO version of the current Epic), we believe this might be the new Epic itself, potentially with an EVO model also in the works.
This new bike would join the 75mm-travel Epic World Cup and Epic HT models currently in the range.
Here's what we know so far.
Is this a new Specialized Epic?
So, why do we believe this is a new Epic and not a new Epic EVO?
First up, the EVO moniker is generally attributed to longer-travel, burlier versions of Specialized’s bikes, lacking the absolute top-end features of the brand's non-EVO builds.
Take the current Epic EVO as an example – it comes with Ground Control tyres and no remote lockout switch on the stock bike, nor the auto-lockout Brain technology. The current Epic gets the Brain shock and the Renegade rear tyre (far racier than the Ground Control), as well as less suspension travel front and rear.
The picture of Koretzky, posted by Specialized on Instagram (above), shows a bike being ridden with what we believe to be Renegade tyres front and rear.
In addition, the bike looks to have what must now be considered a production-ready version of SRAM’s XC Flight Attendant automatic suspension system. The fork is branded-up as a SID Ultimate (the flagship XC model in the RockShox forks range), rather than a BlackBox version (BlackBox being SRAM's moniker for prototype components).
If the current ‘attitude’ of the stock EVO is to be continued, we wouldn’t expect to see such race-focused tech on the bike.
On top of this, the current Epic is four years old. It's bang on time for the bike to be updated, especially because it’s an Olympic year.
With many of the best XC bikes now coming with 110-120mm of travel, we wouldn’t be surprised if Specialized also jumped on this with its latest bike.
After all, many of the team’s racers have already moved on from the 100mm version of the Epic to the 110mm-travel Epic EVO in 2023, reflecting the ever-more technical nature of XC racing.
Specialized is rarely left behind when it comes to tech developments, so it would seem odd if this new bike didn’t feature 110-120mm travel, sitting alongside the 75mm-travel Epic World Cup.
Has the time come for an XC version of SRAM Flight Attendant?
It's been hidden in plain sight for a while, but we can now see SID forks from RockShox with Flight Attendant. This new bike also appears to have a Flight Attendant body grafted onto a SIDLuxe shock.
There’s no obvious Brain system (Specialized’s own auto-lockout function for fork and shock) in the pictures, so it looks as though SRAM’s electronics are being used to control the suspension.
Flight Attendant has previously been reserved for longer-travel applications, with many wondering if the system will see the light of day in the XC world.
That’s all we know for now, but we’re certainly looking forward to the first World Cup races of the new season – the XC campaign kicks off in Mairiporã, Brazil, on 12-14 April – where we'd expect to see more of the latest tech.
