Tested: 2007 Cove Bikes Shocker Downhill

Cove Bikes Shocker DH /// $2,350, frame only; $5,050, as shown;
877-929-2683; covebike.com

It’s easy to avoid new things. Being comfortable is nice. Really nice. Like pigs in a blanket on Sunday morning. Or that favorite toque that’s so oily it sheds a good rainfall. Trying new things, on the other hand, can be risky, darn near deadly if you’re not careful. But risky draws us in. Like shooting gophers with a sawed-off shotgun. Dumb, but man does it feel good.

So, when I got the chance to try a Shocker, risky was running through the veins. I knew things could go south. But, like my grandfather Gnarl once taught me, if you’re stepping out of comfortable and into risky, one fact is crucial—you have to do it right. You’re probably only gonna get one shot. The 2007 Shocker from North Vancouver-based Cove Bikes does it right. A light, deep-dish downhill race rig, the bike takes a simple, straight-as a-Sitka-spruce approach to the complex issue of satisfying a wide variety of rider styles and trail conditions. For versatility, the Shocker offers 8.3 inches of adjustable-travel, a dual-link suspension, a 12x150-millimeter Maxle rear axle and tough-as-a-Canadian-winter replaceable dropouts. And it’s got more hardware than Home Depot: eight fully sealed cartridge bearings, 12-millimeter stainless steel pivot axles, an 83-millimeter bottom bracket and Easton RAD 7005 aluminum tubes that are so gusseted at the headtube they look like a bull moose in heat.

My ride was moss green, with a plush Boxxer World Cup fork, SRAM drivetrain, Cromag stem, Hayes HFX 9 brakes and Sun MTX wheels. Even though the bike is bred to race, and I’m not, it still ate trail faster than beaver does birch—thanks in part to a low 14.7-inch bottom bracket and a sweetly chopped, 64.9-degree headtube. But perhaps the most notable feature is the Shocker’s lateral stiffness. The bike bangs through corners like a field mouse on speed.

It’s important to note that this is not a virtual-pivot bike—the links work in same direction, as opposed to VPP pivots, which move in different directions. Through the first part of the travel, Cove claims, the wheel moves diagonally up and back to give the bike killer traction on small to mid-sized bumps. For the last two-thirds, the wheel moves almost vertically, and slightly forward to take on bigger hits. Casing jumps, hucking biggins, my nearly 200 pounds of man flesh rode the thing as hard as I’ve ever ridden anything and the bottom out failed to rear its ugly head even once.

So sometimes you gotta go for the big move. Step out of your comfort zone and take a risk. The Cove’s not afraid. And nor should you be. It may be bold, but the Shocker delivers.—Mitchell Scott