MBUK SUPER BIKE - #128 MATT WALKER'S SARACEN MYST

The British national downhill champ has a new ride for the 2024 race season

- James Costley

The Myst has been a staple of Saracen's line-up since 2011 and has proven to be one of the fastest downhill bikes out there, racking up World Cup and World Championships wins under the likes of Manon Carpenter, Danny Hart, Greg Williamson and the man seen here, Matt Walker.

It's undergone some major changes for 2024 - the biggest since its inception, in fact with a view to making it even more capable.

The frame game

Development of the new chassis started in 2019. "It was a really long process," admits Matt. "It was tough at the start, because we [the Madison Saracen Factory Race Team] loved the Myst, we'd raced it for a long time and it had evolved over that period of four or five years anyway.... [but] World Cup tracks have only got faster and rougher, and the speeds are higher [so it was about having] a package that was able to cope with that a little bit better."

Matt himself had a major role in the bike's development. "It was a really good opportunity for me to get my teeth into a project and build a bike how I wanted it to be," he explains.

"I had a lot of say in the design process and how the bike rode. It was mainly based off my feedback, which was really cool. We started at the drawing board, with what I wanted to feel more out of a bike." Saracen's designers focused on three key areas of improvement - weight distribution, brake interaction with the suspension, and the suspension curve itself. Their first solution was to create a tunnel in the seat tube. This allowed them to move the rear shock down to just above the bottom bracket, and lower the suspension linkage, too. Not only has this dropped the frame's centre of gravity by 106mm, but it's also shifted it further back under the rider's body.