Blur LT
What Mountain Bike Issue 48
BEST FULL DAY SUSS BIKE BLUR LT
It's a return win for Santa Cruz's superb Blur
Santa Cruz's Blur won this category last year and became our benchmark bike for tough, but unremittingly fast and fun riding. Even after a full year of hammering our long term sample, it's still the bike we grab first for big days out, marathon races, technical climb features or just buggering about with our mates. Then just when it was looking slightly short in its travel compared to fork advances and we were reluctantly facing a switch of bike, they went and brought out the Long Travel 'LT' version.
It uses the same big tyre friendly disc specific rear end as the Blur 4X slalom bike, but with a whole new gusseted front end and upper linkage on the hard kicking, smooth cruising, rock swallowing, Virtual Pivot Point suspension system. This stretches rear travel to 135mm and creates just the right ride character for a 130-150mm fork up front. It's also tight enough to really make use of that extra suspension too, rather than wobbling around vaguely on top of it like some of the other long travel lightweight bikes we could mention. But climbers needn't fret, as it still weighs almost the same as the old Blur. It's definitely looking like our allday benchmark for next year, too.