[Bike Check] Enduro Champion Nicola Casadei’s Santa Cruz Bronson C

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Whilst out putting the km’s in the bag testing in Punta Ala, we spent one particularly warm February afternoon riding with and chatting with the 2015 Italian Enduro champion and Santa Cruz sponsored rider, Nicola Casadei.

Nicola was with his training bike which although “only” a Bronson C was tricked out to the max with more specialist custom components than we have seen on a Pro’s bike in a while. Nicola went over his bike with us, plus showed us a few moves on the trails.

Nicola was having his fork tuned with Formula who were present for a test and fork development day.

No rest for the wicked, whilst out and about at the end of the trails on the beach in Cala Violina, Nicola is arranging his next ride.

Pretty special riding with a pro in February, these trails are perfect for Nicola’s training program and winter-time desire to ride always.

Nicola makes short work of any trail and also likes to launch just for fun.

Enduro is not just about descents, and Nicola was constantly putting short work into anything that slowed him down up on the transfer trails above the beach.

Nicola shows us how to highline a corner that normally sinks most riders.

Nicola’s Bronson C

We thought we would leave Nicola in the shot, all the magic bike check photos need a rider to let go and hold, Nicola obliged for us today.

That is a 46T Ingrid rear gear sprocket, there are not many of those around, it is a specialist component. We tried it for a while and can say it worked.

Formula brakes keep things stopping well. Nicola uses the T1 version, which we suspect a lot of pros use as it saves weight over the RO versions.

Santa Cruz make two versions of the Bronson, the C is a slightly heavier version, although Nicola says his race bike is very similar, we can’t say the C version will be slowing him down.

Nicola was tight lipped about the shock he was running, it is a Extreme Shox Storia, an Italian brand.

Special tune on the Formula fork, but he was running the middle valving. Always open…

Up front the cockpit is ready to keep things on track, he runs his brakes fairly low and sports a GPS from Garmin with a 45 mm stem and 780 mm bar.

Sram XX1 on the gear shifting, all positive clicks despite his custom drive train.

Thompson seat post and Dirty saddle.

Shimano pedals and INGRID cranks.

Custom INGRID 36T ring and cranks, later that night Mr “INGRID” messaged us on Facebook when he heard we were doing an upclose on Nicola’s bike. INGRID is a custom house brand from Italy. He wondered what we thought, also he let us  know the components will be available shortly.

Shifting with an XX1 mech.

There is no doubt the Bronson stands out in the sun and makes us dream of being able to ride it as fast as Nicola.