Norco sweeps elite men’s nationals with new prototype DH bike

Norco started teasing its new downhill rig late last week online, just days ahead of Canadian downhill national championships. The yet-unnamed project’s been in the works for over a year, but Norco Factory Team recently decided to make the mid-season switch from their team-only Range DH bikes to the new prototype – or “beyond prototype” – dedicated downhill bike.

The launch was a resounding success. Norco swept the top three steps of the elite men’s championship podium. Lucas Cruz won his first elite national title on the prototype. Mark Wallace was 0.12 seconds behind in second place. Development Engineer (and past national champion) Kirk McDowall, heavily involved in the new DH project, completed the sweep in third.

Gracey Hemstreet was well positioned to add another medal, potentially a championship, had she not been injured in training.

Sweeping a national championship in your team’s first race is a fantastic way to launch a new bike, especially mid-season. Even if the new race rig is still in the late-prototype phase, it has shown it has speed.

Bringing three bikes onto a national championship podium is not a great way to keep a not-completely-public-yet bike under wraps, though.

So, what does the new bike look like?

The original Norco Range.

The Range DH, as raced by Gracey Hemstreet at Lourdes World Cup in 2022. Photo: Andy Vathis / Norco Bicycles

Mark Wallace on the new DH Bike

Well, it looks a lot like Norco’s Range platform, with some key differences. There are surely geometry differences, though those are hard to pick out. The shock moves forward in the frame, instead of hiding in the shock tunnel like on the Range. It is quite a long-stroke shock and the frame has a kink mid-downtube so that the shock runs parallel to the frame. The linkage itself does not appear to hang as low below the bottom bracket as it does on the Range, either.

The bike still uses an idler pulley, like the range. It also uses a similar modular rear axle design as the range.

There is still a space in the seat tube for the shock, like on the Range, but the new bike looks like it moves more of the linkage up into that space as well.

The frames look like they’re still set up for all sorts of telemetry, so the team is likely still testing set up, if not changes to the frame.

Beyond that, the team all looks like they’re running Blackbox shocks and Boxxer forks from RockShox. Those have been appearing on more and more pro bikes lately, so they might be moving closer to launch.