MR.SUSPENSION

WHEN YOU’VE LOST THE SPRING IN YOUR SPRING, THERE’S ONLY ONE MAN TO TURN TO. NESTLED IN A BUSINESS PARK IN GQEBERHA – OR IN THE BACK OF HIS FULLY-EQUIPPED VAN – SUSPENSION GURU ROBBIE POWELL TURNS 35 YEARS OF CYCLE-INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE INTO BUTTER-SMOOTH TRAVEL AND RELIGIOUS REBOUND: SIMPLY PUT, HE MAKES YOUR FORKS AND SHOCKS BETTER THAN NEW

- TIM BRINK

“It hasn’t been a career, it's been the experience of a lifetime. I’d like to say I’ve worked hard; but I’ve been having fun the whole time. I don’t think there’s anything I haven’t tried.”

It started in Port Elizabeth, as Gqeberha was back then, with putting on (from 280km away) the first proper mountain-bike festival in SA: the Sedgefield Fat Tyre Festival. Along with fellow industry heavyweights (“today, not then – then we were just kids who rode mountain bikes”) Gavin Vos and Brandon Els.

“So, ja… you can say since 1989, I guess; although suspension only started coming into play a few years later. Owning Knysna Cycle Works in the early 90s, building trails we still ride today in Knysna, the first Knysna Oyster Festival… Leon Evans and I put on the first mountain-bike event there, in 1994. Those were big days in mountain-biking history.”

Powell was an early suspension adopter; and as with most new technologies – in a pattern we still see today, rim-brake roadies! – there was much resistance to it. But he’s been at the forefront not just of learning to ride it, but learning to work on it and develop it. “Suspension has always been a thing for me. Even at Knysna Cycle Works, I was working for Manitou, driving to nationals and stuff, promoting, racing, servicing forks.”

He still has his glorious first-generation dual-suspension Manitou FS, which has pride of place in his workshop. All 1.9 inches of elastomer-sprung rear-wheel travel. “I love that bike. It was the one that opened the doors to what we ride today – even if the weight-weenies of the day said suspension was too heavy, and had no future.