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The Syndicate wind-tunnel tests Jackson Goldstone’s mullet

Science and a Scottish World Cup win for the Santa Cruz crew

Photo by: The Syndicate

World Cup downhill is a game of seconds. Tenths and hundredths of seconds on course add up and can have a huge impact at the finish line. Especially when winning margins are often substantially less than a second.

With that in mind, The Syndicate heads to the wind tunnel to test out the team’s new mullet set up. They’re not talking wheel sizes, though. Steve Peat wants to know exactly how much time the flowing locks of Canadian junior men’s downhill world champion Jackson Goldstone are costing him on course. (He figures about three seconds…).

Then the team heads to Fort William for another wild, muddy weekend of racing. Nina Hoffmann storms to the win on what she describes as a “perfect run.”

World Cups, world championships hammers and wind tunnel testing speed tucks and race haircuts. It’s a big episode, dive  right in.

The Syndicate – EP 2: Mullet Drag, The Perfect Run and a Big Peaty Head Donk

What does The Syndicate have to say about mullets and Fort William? Well, quite a lot, actually.

It has felt like a long time coming, but we can confirm that the rumours are true. After a bit of a hiatus, we feel like this really is the start of something new and VERY exciting.

After warming up in Lourdes, Fort William felt like a million miles away and we were itching to get back to it. Before the main event, we had a couple of other things in the pipeline

Steve got between the tape, at his local, for The Steel City DH race. A race he helped forge many moons ago and now is on par with any of the WCs on the circuit. Unfortunately, a cold meant Nina didn’t end up racing, but she did get to witness Uncle Peat have a near career-ender + and a big ol’ head donk, so not a bad day.

Then, just before heading to the Fort, Greg, Nina and Jackson headed to Silverstone for some wind tunnel testing. This is something the team have wanted to do for a long time and finally found a golden moment in the rider’s schedules to get them all into a blustery room. If you have never seen what goes into this kind of testing, it is actually pretty cool and does give some serious food for thought. The main take away from the test was that Jackson’s mullet has a drag of approx 3 seconds (a Steve Peat fact).

Following all that excitement, we finally headed to the land of Haggis for the main event. There isn’t much to add to this segment after the fact as I am sure we can all agree what a race it was, for all categories. The weather obviously did what the weather usually does when you are in Scotland, and this did result in some spicier fresh sections, but the crew felt good and rode even better.

Still, MVP was, of course, Nina. She even described her finals run as “The perfect run” and we totally agree. After a mechanical in Quali, it was clear the pace was there and it felt like a bit of a ticking time bomb. What a win.

The rest of the crew also were on top form; P1 (Jackson), P1 (Laurie) and P3 (Greg) in Quali definitely got our tongues wagging for race day and it didn’t disappoint with a P2 (Jackson), P3 (Laurie) and P7 (Greg). A mega result for the team and also some room to get the elbows out and shimmy up the standings. Not bad to take home team of the week either.

Thanks to all that help make this happen.

Bring on Austria.