When it comes to bicycle brands making an impact at the recent Cross Country Mountain Bike World Championships in Scotland, it’s fair to say that Pinarello stole the show! In a dream scenario for the premium Italian brand we saw their cutting-edge mountain bikes take no less than four medals, including three golds.
Italian bike brand Pinarello have been at the forefront of professional road racing for decades, most recently supplying their stunning road bikes to Team Sky and subsequently Ineos Grenadiers. When cycling superstar Tom Pidcock joined the team he wanted to continue his mixed racing campaign, spreading himself over the three cycling disciplines of Road, Cyclocross and Mountain Biking and so we quickly saw Ineos Grenadiers entering the world of mountain bike racing. Competing in 2022, Tom was onboard an unbadged bike from a rival brand and we all speculated on whether or not Pinarello would go on to develop their own bike for future seasons.
Fast forward to May 2023 and just before the first big races of the season Pinarello revealed the Dogma XC full-suspension mountain bike, coinciding their entry into mountain biking with the recent signing of 2022 World Champion Pauline Ferrand Prevot, who along with Tom Pidcock, formed a compact two-person team benefiting from all of the expertise and logistical support of the larger Ineos Grenadiers road team.
In the relatively short lead-up to this year’s World Championships in Scotland the all-new Dogma XC full-suspension bike would prove itself with some significant wins; Tom Pidcock was on the top step of the podium at the first round of the Cross Country World Cup and Pauline Ferrand Prevot took victory at a round of the Short Track World Cup. With both riders firmly focused on the upcoming World Championships the scene was set for the Dogma XC to really make its mark within mountain biking. As you’ll no-doubt already know, Tom Pidcock went on to take the World Championship title in front of a home crowd, capping off an amazing day of racing, onboard his Pinarello Dogma XC full-suspension mountain bike!
Tom Pidcock piloted his Pinarello Dogma XC full-suspension mountain bike to a historic victory in the World Mountain Bike Championships.
As you’d expect, this premium Italian mountain bike includes numerous innovative design features including a split rear triangle, flex-stay suspension and adjustable travel. The split triangle consists of two ‘semi triangles’ which attach to a rotation point seamlessly molded into the frame, removing the need for seatstay and chainstay bridges while remaining stiff and efficient; the removal of those bridges allowed Pinarello to shorten the chainstays and allow for clearance for tyres up to 2.35in wide. The flexstays do away with the need for an additional pivot point at the rear dropouts, relying on a cleverly engineered carbon layup to facilitate the rear wheel travel while reducing overall weight and increasing stiffness.
We managed to get up close and personal at the Ineos team tent, capturing some detail shots of Tom’s Dogma XC full-suspension bike.
If you’re already familiar with Pinarello’s road bikes you’ll know that their frames always include unique profiles designed to increase stiffness and efficiency where it’s needed or enhance comfort and compliance at key points. Similarly with the Dogma XC full-suspension, one of the most visually significant aspects is the unique bottom bracket configuration featuring an additional strut running from the seat tube to the down tube, creating an additional triangular void. Pinarello say that this design increases overall stiffness at the bottom bracket while accommodating that large suspension pivot point.
Tom Pidcock’s Pinarello Dogma XC includes a unique bottom bracket configuration which increases stiffness and facilitates the large suspension pivot point.
The top-tube-mounted rear shock includes some adjustability allowing you to tune suspension travel according to the demands of any particular race course. This means that Ineos can set up Tom and Pauline’s bikes to either pair a 100mm travel fork with a 90mm rear shock or a 120mm fork with 100mm of rear travel when the courses get more gnarly. The front fork and rear shock both include an electronic lockout system from SR Suntour, utilizing built-in sensors that automatically react to the terrain beneath them, making this cross country machine even more efficient when climbing or sprinting out of the saddle.
Tom Pidcock’s Dogma XC is packed full of tech, including the SR Suntour rear shock featuring an electronic lockout.
Pinarello quickly became the headline brand at the 2023 Cross Country Mountain Bike World Championships in Glentress, Scotland. Are we overstating Pinarello’s achievements a little? Nope, all credit to them; their all-new Dogma XC Hardtail was revealed to the public just a day before their French mountain bike super-champ Pauline Ferrand Prevot rode it to the win in the Short Track Mountain Bike World Championship! Having seen the severity of the full-length Cross Country loop we all assumed that Pauline would switch over to her Pinarello Dogma XC full suspension bike for Saturday’s main event, however she chose to ride the Dogma XC Hardtail again and made short work of the challenging course to take the win, scoring a historic double-gold-winning-weekend!
Pauline Ferrand Prevot decided to race her brand-new Dogma XC Hardtail in the Cross Country Mountain Bike World Championships.
As soon as the Pinarello Dogma XC Hardtail became visible on social media, the day before the Short Track Mountain Bike World Championships and before there was any official word from Pinarello, the internet blew up with endless chat on the unique appearance of this lightweight race machine. It certainly got people talking thanks to its curious aesthetics around the bottom bracket area, mirroring the configuration of their Dogma XC full-suspension model and, perhaps even more significantly, its curious asymmetrical seatstays which had viewers very quickly forming a ‘love it or hate it’ opinion.
We’ve seen similar, albeit not quite so visually-striking versions of this unique design approach on some of Pinarello’s most successful road bikes over the years and the Dogma XC Hardtail follows the same principle. By creating asymmetric seatstays the engineers at Pinarello say that the bike is better able to cope with the pedaling forces incurred through the frame; the higher-positioned left hand seatstay being reinforced to help balance energy transfer throughout the rear of the frame.
Those asymmetric seatstays will no-doubt divide opinion, but the Dogma XC Hardtail’s race-winning capability can’t be debated!
Unlike the full-suspension Dogma XC, the hardtail option is designed around a 100mm travel fork rather than 120mm, however it is compatible with a dropper seatpost, a requirement that has become the norm on all cross country race bikes as riders make their bid to overcome the most technically demanding race courses on the circuit. As you can see from the photos, Pauline opted to run one for the World Champs and made good use of it on the infamous ‘Salmon Ladder’ stone slab drop which saw riders dropping down a near vertical rockface into a tight turn and drop off.
Taking the gold in the Short Track AND Cross Country World Championships, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot has already proven that the all-new Pinarello Dogma XC Hardtail can handle the most demanding mountain bike races in the world; now we just have to wait until us mere mortals can get our hands on one. As Pinarello stockists we’re super-excited to see the Pinarello Dogma XC full-suspension and hardtail bikes on our shop floor when they become available in March 2024!
Launched on Thursday, a double World Championship-winning hardtail mountain bike by Saturday! Chapeau Pauline and Pinarello!
Written by Johnny Dodgin
Photos by Johnny Dodgin and Toby Dalton
Have you seen our Fast Bike feature? Missed some of our best bikes? You can now see all of our featured bikes in one place over on Pinterest where you’ll find links to each of our Fast Bike Feature Blogs too!
Click the link below and search our archive…
