Today we planned to talk to Rene Wildhaber about biking in general and scheduled to meet him at his hotel room to chat about racing bikes and all things mountain biking. However on entering his room we felt we witnessed a sea change in mountain biking. There was one of the fastest Enduro riders on earth with his bike (here the complete bike check, with the new Shimano XTR Di2 electronic shifting) plugged into a computer via a USB port.
Video: Rene Chats About Electronic Gears
Watching what Rene was doing was an interesting experience as he tried to tune the gears. At the same time the imagination starts to run wild as we see the future now and rider’s mechanics tuning the bikes before each race to to set suspension and gears for each track giving the edge on their performance. Is that a real possibility?
We are left with many questions, How far before we have full control of the electronics of a bike on our iphones via bluetooth? How long before the mechanic in the pits can adjust the bikes on the fly? How long before the bike knows where it is via GPS, on a race track and adjusts the suspension and gears accordingly? What is next?
