RADON SWOOP 10.0

With 29in wheels and 170mm travel, has Radon upped the enduro ante in one swell Swoop?

- Alan Muldoon

€ 3,829/ 29 in / radon-bikes.de

NEED TO KNOW

• 29er enduro bike with 170mm travel at both ends

• Carbon front triangle, alloy stays – M, L and XL frame sizes

• Fox 38 Grip2 fork has four-way adjustable damping while X2 shock has low-speed compression and rebound adjustment

• No geometry flip-chip, but the Swoop has an Acros Angleset with 1.5° of adjustment

The Radon Slide Trail was our direct-sales Trail Bike of the Year in 2020. As good as the Slide Trail is, though, it was actually the Swoop that put Radon on the mtb map. Adjustable, affordable and agile, the latest Swoop remains true to its original values. Now with 29in wheels, a carbon front end and 170mm travel, the Swoop is also more capable than ever before.

The updated geometry is not so extreme as to make it a monster truck. By eliminating the seat stay bridge, Radon has been able to achieve a relatively short 438mm chainstay length, which tucks the 29in rear-wheel in under the rider and keeps the bike flickable. It’s not a new approach, Specialized did the same thing on the 2015 Enduro and the Plus-size Stumpy before that, but it seems to work well on the Swoop as the front end on the size large isn’t super- long, so the bike feels well balanced.

Gone are the geometry-adjust flip chips in the frame, replaced instead by an Acros angles that offers 1.5° of adjustment. In the slack setting, it yields a 63.7° head angle and I suspect it was fitted to slacken the bike a touch, as I can’t see anyone running a 65.2° head angle on a 170mm-travel rig.