POETRY IN MOTION

The new Specialized Epic World Cup blurs the line between hardtails and full-suspension

Specialized has a new Epic out and S honestly, we have no idea if we should be calling it a full-suspension bike or a hardtail. That's because the new shock, integrated into the top tube, will work with zero per cent sag and effectively remain locked out just like the fixed back end on a hardtail.

It certainly blurs the lines between the Specialized XC race bikes, of which there are now four: the Epic Hardtail, Epic (the old bike), Epic Evo (more down-country-focused) and Epic World Cup here. It's the new bike we're most interested in, of course, and for starters it looks radically different to the bike that preceded it. The shock is now integrated into the frame and engineered to be a structural part of it, becoming the RockShox SID WCID (World Cup Integrated Design).

Trek got there first with this idea, launching its Supercaliber and IsoStrut integrated shock back in 2020 with a Fox shock tucked away inside a sleeve, a focus on stiffness, and a flex-stay design rather than the customary Trek ABP. Spesh has also gone with a flex-stay design on the Epic World Cup, just as it did with the old Epic, and the performance advantages here are obvious.

REAL-WORLD TEST