Is there any phrase in moun­tain bik­ing that’s more overused than ​“longer and slack­er?” Every man­u­fac­tur­er (Ibis includ­ed) is guilty of it. It makes bikes descend bet­ter but the ques­tion is, how far can it be pushed? We felt we were at the lim­its of that trend until we began exper­i­ment­ing with seat tube angles and fork offset.

By mak­ing the seat tube angle a steep 76°, we’ve put more weight over the front tire. This keeps the front end from wan­der­ing or wash­ing out. Mov­ing the seat tube for­ward also required push­ing the front end for­ward to keep the top tube num­bers sta­t­ic, result­ing in the longer reach.

In addi­tion to the steep seat tube, the Rip­mo also uses a fork off­set that is short­er than tra­di­tion­al­ly used. That makes a 65.9° head angle feel like 64.5° with­out increas­ing the wheel­base. You get the sta­bil­i­ty of a slack head angle with­out giv­ing up your abil­i­ty to go around tighter corners.

The Rip­mo geom­e­try enables a new lev­el of con­fi­dence and speed, bring­ing the sta­bil­i­ty of the EWS Team Cham­pi­onship win­ning HD4 to 29” wheels.