SRAM announce brand new Truvativ Descendant CoLab bars

Kyle Strait’s suicide no-hander to Rampage win number two. Every second of Stevie Smith’s World Cup hat trick to the championship. The first jersey or helmet you wore that made you ride faster. A bicycle frame design you like so much that it keeps you awake at night. Music or art that speaks to your very soul—gives you goose bumps. What do these things have in common? A certain genius that make them instant legends. It’s not just that they go bigger or faster or prettier or louder. It’s something that you can literally feel when you see it or hear it. It’s how they make the impossible seems perfectly natural. The great athletes and artists do everything with a unique signature that is instantly recognizable—and impossible to steal. It’s art, magic, genius. The Descendant CoLab series celebrates the these core elements that transform someone or something from ordinary to legendary. Combining essential style and attitude with uncompromising engineering, CoLab is an ever-evolving signature series of components created in cooperation with bicycling’s most exciting athletes, advocates, artists, designers—and fanatics.

KYLE STRAIT | Larger than Life

Big, bold and purely American, Kyle Strait stormed onto the gravity scene as a kid, and didn’t hang around too long before making his mark. Lyle, as friends know him, is the first rider to ever huck himself off Utah’s cliff’s well enough to win Red Bull Rampage twice. And for as well as the big man dominates the big-mountain lines, he’s perhaps even more at home on the high-G turns of slalom and speed & style—Strait famously declared “Slalom is an American sport” after winning the Sea Otter Classic event a few years back. He’s limitlessly talented on two wheels, but he’s also one of the humblest dudes you could ever hope to meet.

It takes a lot of strength, leverage and confidence to move that much man carcass and bike, so Kyle’s bars are 808 millimeters wide. And to make sure you don’t forget his nationality, he chose a big ol’ eagle to decorate them.

808MM WIDE
25MM RISE
5º UP 9º BACK


MARTIN SÖDERSTRÖM | Indestructible

“There’s nothing I would rather do,” he tells himself when feels the nerves of competition or the struggle to learn a new trick gets to be too much. Martin Söderström has every right to be nervous as he gets ready for a slopestyle run and he knows a thing or two about struggles—the tall Swede has fought back from some massive injuries over the past few years. Can you name another rider who got a big prize-money check in a hospital bed? The fight has made him stronger and better. It’s something you can see in his runs, a dedication to being the best he can be that always keeps him coming back—and always with a smile on his face.

Martin lets his style on the bike do the talking for him, and his bar design is clean, with a reminder of his country’s colors and the dates and locations of his biggest crashes.

780MM WIDE
25MM RISE
5º UP 7º BACK

JÉRÔME CLEMENTZ | Entre les Arbres

Jey Clementz is at home anywhere. You have to be when your job is traveling the world to race a mountain bike. But truth be told, Clementz is happiest when he’s riding between the trees—entre les arbres—taking in the sights, sounds, smells and textures very, very quickly. The French Enduro specialist rides with an unmistakable style that is light, quiet and efficient, like a bird, earning him the nickname Loizo Rider. And his ability to find the best racing lines would make you think that there’s a little bird, flying high above, helping him see the fastest way down every trail.

Jey’s inner need to thread tight and technical trails at high speed caused him to chose narrower-width bars, relatively speaking. And to make sure everything ties together, JC’s logo is bright Cannondale green.

750MM WIDE
20MM RISE
5º UP 7º BACK

STEVE SMITH | Long Live Chainsaw

On or off the bike, if you wanted to keep up with Stevie Smith, you needed to bring your a-game. And the chances were good that he’d still go harder than you. Straight talking and hard charging were ways of life for the man who brought the title of Downhill World Cup Champion home to Vancouver Island in 2013. Make no mistake about it—the kind of speed it took to win that championship required a hell of a lot of work. And desire. And dedication. You’re not given this kind of success—you make it. But every once in a great while, a legend is born. Stevie Smith was pure legend.

The Descendant Steve Smith bar commemorates the brilliant riding style of Canada’s greatest downhill racer, with go-for-broke style and a nod to the red of the Canadian flag.

780MM WIDE
25MM RISE
5º UP 7º BACK

Bars to Get Behind

Proceeds of Steve Smith signature Descendant CoLab bars to benefit the Stevie Smith Legacy Foundation

Spend any amount of time at a mountain bike event with a gravity focus and you’ll feel the loss of Stevie Smith. The Canadian downhiller, who took the World Cup title in 2013, had a big heart, a big personality, and inspired so many mountain bikers in his home country and around the world. Talk to any of his former teammates and they will tell stories of how he helped them believe in themselves and motivated them to ride better and faster.

Following Stevie’s tragic death, the Stevie Smith Legacy Foundation (www.steviesmithlegacy.com) was formed to help ensure that new generations of mountain bikers might benefit from the encouragement Stevie gave is teammates – and from the sacrifices his mother Tiann made for him. Donations from friends, fans and sponsors have already climbed to almost six figures.

Already in development for months prior to his passing, Stevie’s new bar is a result of his collaboration with TRUVATIV. With permission from his mother, the Stevie Smith model bars will be made available for sale, and their profits will go to the Stevie Smith Legacy Foundation.