SHORT-TRAVEL SHREDDERS

With a ride that’s more director’s chair than armchair, short-travel bikes put you fully in charge on the trails; we put two to the test

-  Alan Muldoon

The mountain bike industry and the media love to pigeonhole bikes by travel, but some models simply refuse to be boxed in. In this test we have two such bikes: the new Lapierre XRM 6.9 marathon bike and the Trek Top Fuel 8 short-travel trail bike.

Now, it would be easy to assume that both of these bikes are trying to solve the same problem - ride every trail as fast as humanly possible - from opposing directions, but both brands are actually trending in the same direction... upwards in travel.

For the XRM 6.9, Lapierre uses its stock XC frame, adding a 120mm-travel fork (10mm more than the XR) to slacken the numbers a touch, where the burlier build kit also reflects the increased versatility of the bike.

In contrast, Trek uses a bespoke frame for the Top Fuel 8, but it has increased the fork travel from 120mm to 130mm since the bike was launched in 2022. And if we wind the clock back even further, the Top Fuel's XC past becomes even more apparent. Taken as a top down or bottom-up approach, that really depends on your perspective, but both bikes are clearly moving in the same direction.

Both are also evenly matched on price: the Lapierre a hair under £4k, the Trek a couple of hundred quid more. That's not to say the bikes are really similar though, and the weight difference alone can tell you a lot about the differences. The Trek weighs 14.89kg (32.83lb) whereas the Lapierre is considerably lighter at 13.19kg (29.08lb).

Part of the weight saving is because Lapierre uses a full carbon frame and a flex-stay 110mm travel suspension design, now common to most XC race bikes. At this price point Trek employs aluminium as the frame material of choice, and uses its ABP suspension design to deliver 120mm travel. It also has integrated down tube storage, which is super convenient but adds to the baseline frame weight.