Ibis Announces 2019 EWS Team

Ibis is beyond stoked to announce our 2019 team ros­ter.

We gath­ered the team in San­ta Cruz last Decem­ber for some prod­uct test­ing, bike rid­ing and a few trips to the gym for some seri­ous train­ing. The antics are chron­i­cled in the video above. 

Robin Wall­ner joined Ibis four years ago, when he first made the leap from rac­ing World Cup Down­hill to Enduro. We’re very excit­ed to have re-signed Robin to the team. He’s become an invalu­able resource in test­ing and devel­op­ment, as well as a Team Dad (both lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly). We look for­ward to work­ing with him for many years to come.

After win­ning the EWS Team Cham­pi­onship in 2017, 2018 was a rebuild­ing year with new faces, Bex Baraona, Julie Duvert and Lewis Buchanan. The team was round­ed out with leader Robin Wallner.

The team instant­ly meshed, with Robin Wall­ner and Bex Baraona kick­ing off the sea­son with their best career results ever — on the yet unre­leased Rip­mo. Scots­man Lewis Buchanan rounds out the roster. 

As the sea­son pro­gressed, Robin earned anoth­er podi­um fin­ish, and was con­sis­tent­ly fin­ish­ing in the top 10. He was ranked num­ber two until he skipped La Thuile to be present at the birth of his son, Ted Wall­ner (your future 2040 EWS Champion).

After a pre­vi­ous sea­son rid­dled by injury, Lew was ready to prove him­self. He made an ear­ly switch from wag­on wheels to 650B and would go on to clinch the British Enduro Cham­pi­onship and earn a top ten fin­ish at Round 3 of the EWS.

2018 was Bex’s first year on a team, with access to a race mechan­ic, data ana­lyt­ics, and the sup­port from every­one at Ibis. As a pri­va­teer, pay­ing her way around the world, she fin­ished a wild­ly impres­sive 8^th. This year, she clinched the British Enduro Cham­pi­onship along­side Lew, fin­ished in 4^th at Round 1 in Chile, and con­sis­tent­ly fin­ished in the top 5.

Despite a hand­ful of injuries (and the birth of a child), the team strung togeth­er a sol­id defense of their Team Cham­pi­onship crown, but were ulti­mate­ly forced to set­tle for sec­ond. With a full year togeth­er and with more time on the var­i­ous bikes, the team is ready to reclaim their crown.