Several RockShox-sponsored cross-country athletes at this weekend’s UCI World Cup round in Lenzerheide, Switzerland – including the elite men’s XCO winner, Nino Schurter – were equipped with a new version of the company’s flagship SID short-travel suspension fork.
Headlining the updates is the addition of the company’s Flight Attendant electronic suspension module, which automatically adjusts the compression damper based on inputs received from the onboard terrain sensor and pedaling sensor. Given how the system is used on longer-travel bikes, the SID-based Flight Attendant system should switch the damper to the fully open and most active setting when the rider isn’t pedaling, and various increments of firmer settings when the system detects the rider is pedaling or climbing.
There are also manual modes should the rider prefer more control, all of which are accessed with a series of buttons on the control module.
Riders running Flight Attendant on the new SID who are on full-suspension bikes would also have been on Flight Attendant-equipped RockShox rear shocks, which feature their own wireless electronic compression damper and similar automatic adjustments. Each module is powered by its own battery, the same one SRAM uses on other AXS wireless components.
Interestingly, not every RockShox-sponsored rider was using Flight Attendant, which suggests it’s either still being refined prior to launch or that some riders just continue to prefer a cable-actuated manual setup (which would also be slightly lighter).
Regardless of the reasoning there, most SID forks at Lenzerheide also sported new forged aluminum crowns that were much more aggressively machined, presumably to decrease weight.
We have no official comment from RockShox just yet, but given Flight Attendant is already on the market for longer-travel bikes – and what ultimately amounts to a modest update to the crown – we expect the new SID version(s) will be release imminently.
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