I recently got this letter from Jo Burt, which was a report on his Saffron and how it handled at the Battle of the beach.
“The Race
Probably the best thing you can say about a bike is that you don’t have to think about it when you’re at race speed, with someone breathing up your chuff in the singletrack. It just worked. 11th in class.
You probably don’t want to know about the succession of deep puddles, the deepest one being up to the headset do you? They weren’t salt water though.
*Lots* of people commented on the bike. Lots.
Then the next day i did a ride round the local trails with the friend I’d been riding with to get a better idea of how the bike behaves in a known environment.
He was on his brand new bike too, a Jones, so despite tired legs we both had New Bike Excitement, and the trails were dry, so we went fast. Very fast.
That long low front end works really really well, all of your weight is on the front end in corners so you’re forcing the front wheel through like you’re supposed to, totally at odds to the wide and high mantra of today, which i like, and on climbs the position feels a bit like being on the hoods on a road bike. It likes to climb with a nice spring.
There was tyre buzzing through the trees, there were Spitfire noises.
I did start thinking about how you’d managed to create a bike that matched the rider’s personality perfectly but didn’t get much further than that.
May have fallen in love with mountain biking again. But that might just have been the dry trails
Jo”
All I can say that it was heart-warming coming from Mint Source himself
