ONE LEGEND IS BORN, ANOTHER RE-BORN

HAVE FAITH

It took just a few minutes—and a 60-foot gap jump in the Utah desert—for Giant Mountain Bike Team rider Kurt Sorge to transform himself from up-and-coming freeride talent to international mountain bike star. Such is the clout of the Red Bull Rampage, arguably the most important freeride contest on the planet.

Last October, Kurt, just 19 at the time, pulled off one of the day’s sickest rides to score a second-place finish at the Red Bull Rampage. And as video footage of the young Canadian’s mind-blowing run went viral on the internet, astute viewers noticed something. When Kurt launched the massive canyon gap, he did so aboard a prototype Giant freeride bike.

The radical red-rock terrain of the Red Bull Rampage course in Virgin, Utah—where riders choose their own lines through a series of jumps and rock drops—is unforgiving on equipment. It’s where many freeride bikes go to die. It’s the most extreme testing grounds imaginable.

“I wouldn’t even think about riding this terrain without a bike that gives me every bit of confidence I need,” Kurt said. “Suspension performance, frame stiffness, balance and weight—it’s all critical to your performance.”

Kurt has played a major role in the development of his newest backcountry weapon—an all-new freeride bike from Giant with a familiar name. 2010 marks the return of the Giant Faith.

The Faith was initially launched in 2005 and it quickly gained a following among riders favoring aggressive, big-mountain terrain. Over the last couple years Giant engineers, product developers and athlete testers such as Kurt were working behind the scenes to produce an all-new version of Faith.

Kurt’s breakthrough performance at the Rampage was especially sweet because the new Faith was inspired by that very event. Kevin Dana, Giant’s mountain bike category manager, said when he and Kurt heard that the Rampage was coming back after several years of not being held, they knew their new project bike would be perfectly suited to its challenges.

“Kurt and I had been talking about building the perfect big mountain bike that would suit new riding trends,” Kevin said. “For a while everybody just kept building bikes with more and more travel inches, but we knew the quality of our Maestro suspension was superior and we wanted to optimize it so riders could get full use of a 180-millimeter [about 7 inches] suspension system. We wanted to build a bike that could be used for extreme terrain like the Rampage but could also be ridden on your home trails.”

This vision is supported by Faith’s use of lighter weight ALUXX SL hydroformed aluminum tubing and a unique replaceable rear dropout feature that allows riders to change the bike’s wheelbase and frame geometry. “It allows riders to custom-tune the bike’s ride characteristics to make it more versatile,” Kevin said.

Even if massive gap jumps and big-time podiums aren’t part of your riding program, it’s nice knowing your bike can handle it. The Giant Faith has been there, done that. Look for it at Giant retailers this summer.