GT FORCE CARBON PRO LE

Is GT’s new enduro 29er a lazy idler or a Force to be reckoned with?

- Alan Muldoon

£5,400 / 29in / gtbicycles.com

NEED TO KNOW

The Force is GT’s new 29er enduro race bike with a carbon front end and alloy rear

Ground-up redesign with high-ish pivot idler LTS suspension delivering 160mm travel

RockShox Ultimate level suspension gives maximum control and combines a 170mm-travel Zeb fork with a Super Deluxe shock

GT has a three-model Force Carbon range with prices starting at £3,600 for the Force Carbon Elite

Last month, we predicted a wave of new idler suspension designs, the latest of which to wash up on our shoreline is the 2022 GT Force Carbon. Not that you needed an early warning system to see this one coming, as Wyn Masters has been ripping around on one for months. Designed around 29in wheels, the GT Force is an enduro race bike through and through. Leading the charge on the Carbon Pro LE is a 170mm-travel RockShox Zeb Ultimate fork, the burly fork matched to a RockShox Super Deluxe Ultimate shock where the new high-pivot LTS suspension layout boasts 160mm travel. And that’s vertical rear-wheel travel, so the number hasn’t been massaged by any sort of hocus pocus.

Being a four-bar suspension design, the specific axle path on the Force isn’t as obvious as on a single-pivot bike. But it’s clear from the layout that it’s not 100 per cent rearward. In fact, it’s much closer to what Trek has done with the latest Session DH bike than, say, the Forbidden Dreadnought. It’s probably better to describe it as a mid-pivot design, but it remains to be seen what nomenclature is widely adopted.