Pace Cycles are pleased to announce that the Specialized Factory Team have chosen to ride the latest Pace RC39XC model fork through the 2006 season. These will be fitted to factory S-Works team bikes.
After extensive testing of a range of suspension forks in the heat and dust of South Africa, then in typical winter conditions in Europe the Team chose to ride the stock Pace suspension fork. Primary athletes in the team include multi- World Champion Christoph Sauser, top ten World ranked Brit' Liam Killeen, Sabine Spitz and Alban Lakata.
Liam Killeen will be representing Great Britain in the Commonwealth Games on Thursday 23 March at the State Mountain Bike Course at Lysterfield, Australia. Liam Killeen comments on his RC39XC: "I'm really happy with the newRC39XC fork the Team will be using this season. It's a really good fork and Pace's attention to detail and superb engineering makes the fork the lightest, stiffest and most responsive XC fork I've ridden".
Christoph Sauser comments on his RC39XC fork: "Stiffness to weight is incredible, and also the 100mm of travel is working absolutely super! Especially when the terrain becomes very rough, the fork still works very smoothly. The RC39 also maintains the same suspension abilities even after a long downhill, and in high temperatures".

Interestingly the whole Team have chosen to ride the RC39XC in its 100mm set-up, 80mm travel having been the norm in past years. And due to the very linear air-spring characteristics of the RC39XC all of the 100mm travel is readily available. Adrian Carter of Pace Cycles comments: "We developed the RC39XC specifically for high intensity xc and marathon racing where riders need a fork which can be set-up correctly so its smooth, soft and compliant to reduce fatigue but then can be locked out for sprints and climbs. For '06 the RC39XC remote also has a soft-start feature so that the fork remains slightly resilient even when in lock-out mode, helping to further isolate shock induced fatigue. But we didn't want to compromise fork chassis performance so the RC39XC benefits from the new ultra-lightweight, ultra stiff '06 carbon fibre Hollowform chassis".
On a vaguely related tip Liam Killeen has been interviewed by BBC Sport. The read about his aims for this thursday's mountainbike event at the Commonwealth Games and his obsession with Jimi Hendrix please visit
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/commonwealth_games/4780082.stm
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