Readers' Rides: George Thompson’s ‘Making Up The Numbers’ XXL Geometron G1

I was hoping we'd see a bit more of the paintjob after catching sight of it in the little crash sequence from Antur...

Good stuff. Very much a bike specced to suit the rider.

I've also got a Works Components 1.0deg headset in reverse in my G16 to reign back the HA to 62.5ish with my mullet config.

Congrats on the podium at the Weekend!

Looks awesome 😎

I hesitated and missed out on your old g16 a couple of times when you solf it an someone else sold it on here. I thought it would be too tricky to get double crown 29" to go on it. Every time I get an uplift I curse slightly at the hesitation.

Maybe I'll hesitate less if you sell this on in the future 😃 at 6'3 its probably one of the very few bikes that are too big for me

You boys always impress me at races, lots of team spirit, determination and always enjoying it

Pleasure to share the paddock with you even though I've never spoken to any of you.

Thank you for the kind words everyone! For anyone wanting to keep up with the team’s endeavours we’re vlogging this season https://www.youtube.com/@makingupthenumbers

What a fun, and unique bike. I was just writing on another forum, that a DH bike seems interesting, but they don’t come in decent sizes. I guess this is the answer.

(6’5”/196 cm here).

Love a bright, fun paint job.

Thanks @tjaard! I think the most important thing when it comes to bike design is that it fits. Travel, kinematics etc are all important but you're just polishing a turd if it's the wrong size. I've found that 550mm reach with a 45mm stem or 560mm reach with a 35mm stem seems to be the sweet spot for me but interested to try the new G1 which has shorter reach & longer chain stays at some stage!

@rockitman I agree that fit is the most important (but then I would, I’m a bike fitter, 🤣). As I’m sure you know, we have to use both stack and reach when we talk about frame size. Lower stack = adding headset spacers to get the same fit, and with modern, slack bikes, the relationship is about 0.4 X stack = reach. Ie, for every 10mm less stack, you end up 4 mm shorter in reach once you add headset spacers (or another part like stem or bar) to compensate.

Every bike I’ve bought over the last couple years has been bigger than the last, currently on a S6 Stumpjumper Evo. Feels pretty good from a size perspective, but it would be interesting to ride a bike and find out it’s too big, as I’ve never experienced that yet. The Geometrons would be the ones to make that happen.

Since I work at a bike shop, that means fortunately, I get huge discounts on bikes. Unfortunately it also means I need to stick with brands we sell (currently Trek, Spesh, Santacruz and Salsa).

For you, even taller than me, and racing DH, Geometron must have been a godsend. I didn’t remember that they made such a long travel version.

I don’t know about the G1, but I think the new Geometrons have taller stack, which would be nice, except it might get you into trouble with running a dual crown fork?

And agree, awesome to see a cool paint job!

Interestingly, until I bought the Eboxx I hadn't ridden a bike that was too big since a Raleigh Grifter in the early 80's. Eboxx has 560mm reach & with a 50mm stem it was too much.

New Geometrons do have taller stack. I need to have a chat with them because on the XXL the head tube is 170mm & I don't think there's a dual crown fork that will work at that length unfortunately but I could be wrong 🙂

Many thanks for sharing this really enjoy reading about the small details each rider has etc. Love the paint job too, keep up the good race results 🙂

I really enjoyed this write up.

Your type of bike and riding is so far from what I do the spectrum needs to be redefined but I love the detail and the technical bits.

I'd never heard of Ochain before reading this ( https://www.ochain.bike/pages/for-nerds) what a fantastic piece of kit 🙂  - Not sure my Orange Gyro warrants one though ...