In 2014 I got my first frame sponsorship. I was racing for Peak Performance Racing and the team sponsors were GT, Sportchek, and Marzochii. I was super excited to get this bike because I had read a Pinkbike article reviewing it and it was suppose to be one of the longest DH bikes out there, which I was eager to get on to. Our team got the second highest spec builds and we put on the Marzochii suspension and swapped out any other parts that we preferred. I took most of the Shimano Saint components off of my Commencal and put them on the new bike.
The color wasn’t my favorite, I would have preferred the black and yellow version, but It wasn’t a big deal and I was super stoked to get out and see how the new bike felt! My first lap was down CBC and I was a bit sceptical on how the Marzochii suspension would perform because in the past, their forks have been quite soft and seemed to blow through travel a lot more than I preferred. I was pleasantly surprised though, and it felt really good right off the bat. The fork was coil sprung compared to the 2014 Fox 40 which had an air spring that was on my last bike. With the hardest spring and a custom shim stack to match the GT Fury’s geometry, I had no complaints all year. The service from Marzochii was unbelievable. I felt like a factory rider, and Naz was always patient and politely answered all of my questions and tried to make sense of my feedback and what I wanted the suspension to do. Even during Crankworx, the busiest week of the year, I had an issue with my fork the night before my next race and they fixed it so I was able to get to practice early the next morning.
The bike was definitely longer than the commencal and I liked it from the very beginning because of that. It was very stable but at the same time, still could corner relatively easily. I didn’t have any complaints on how the bike rode, there were just a couple things that annoyed me about how it was put together.
Because of the design of the pivots, they because creaky very quickly, even after greasing the bearings and making sure everything was put together smoothly. There was also an issue with something called the Dog Bone link wearing out very quickly and creating play that felt like it was coming from the rear linkage. Fortunately, Peak Performance Racing was very close with GT and we were able to get the parts to fix the problem fairly easily.
2014 was also the first year I got to try out tubeless tires/rims. Due to a warranty issue with the wheels that came on our bikes (that none of us were using), we all got brand new Stans Flow EX wheelsets for free. I was really hesitant to use the wheels because they were so light, so I only put on the front one at first. After a while I got brave enough to try it on the rear, and it ended up being the best wheelset I had had yet. I never had to tension or true the wheels, which I was having problems with recently, and never had any problems with the hubs.
Overall, I was very happy with how the bike and the new components performed. There I wish that the fork had an airspring so that you could adjust the pressure and progressiveness, but I was still very impressed with how everything performed and the service that we got. Rumors and Pinkbike articles on the new 27.5 Fury were starting to circulate and I was getting excited to see how big wheels would feel.