This is it, the actual bike Keegan Swenson will ride at Unbound on Saturday. Probably.
There have been two versions of a Swenson-ready Santa Cruz Stigmata floating around Emporia this week, one with a Rockshox Rudy suspension fork, which he raced on last year, and then this one, which we've been reliably informed will be the go-to on race day this year. Swenson said he would make the call based on conditions, as the suspension-corrected rigid fork offers significantly more tire (and therefore mud) clearance than the Rudy. Sometime on Friday, the call was made: he's going rigid.
So this is the bike, race number and all.
Suspension or no suspension is far from the only interesting spec choice. Take a close look at those wheels. First we see a valve stem in line with the rim sticker and tire hot patch up at the top. Seems normal. Until our eye wanders down toward... another valve?
Yep. There are two valves there. The reason? One is a normal tubeless valve. That's the black one. It inflates the Maxxis Rambler tubeless tire. The other one, the silver one, is connected to what we believe is an ultra-thin TPU tube. It's likely an insurance policy, basically. In the event of a sidewall tear, there's still a tube in there that may get Swenson to the finish line, and hopefully, faster than stopping to install one.
Did we do a good job with this story?
