Freshly landed from his impressive Finals run at Red Bull Hardline Tasmania, Gee Atherton shows off our brand-new aluminium DH bike, the S.200.
S.200 is the Aluminium DH bike you’ve always wanted. Awesome at the races, but just as at home in the Bike Park or on the gnarliest of natural DH trails.
S.200 shares the same lug and tube construction as the A.200 but in durable Aluminium 7075 (patent pending). Dave Weagle’s DW4 suspension platform brings high performance with low maintenance to match the S-series “chuck it in the van and go” vibe.
Lug and tube construction means that we can continue to offer a huge range of sizing, bringing to bear 20 years of elite race team experience on how perfect-fit improves performance and rider confidence. We offer 12 standard sizes from 410mm to 520mm – with just 10mm increments between every size.
The S.200 has a mixed wheel configuration and 200mm travel both front and rear and shares geometry with the World Champs and multi-World Cup winning A.200.
Dave Weagle’s DW6 suspension platform gives way to the simpler DW4, which is less adjustable but easier to maintain.
Gee Atherton said, “Our bikes are Built Different. We see so many failures and hear about so many competitor warranty claims when we chat with riders at Dyfi Bike Park uplift or at the races. It was a huge motivator for us that this wouldn’t happen to any bike with our name on it. The switch from Titanium and Carbon to CNC and extruded aluminium means we’ve taken a small hit on weight and design freedom, but with the benefit of even greater impact durability and lower cost. Every single one of our bikes is hand built in Machynlleth, UK and optimised for strength.”
Exhaustive testing in the field at Dyfi, Queenstown and more was followed by brutal testing on a world stage at Red Bull Hardline and simultaneously in the lab at EFBE. The S.200 has passed both EFBE Tri Test Cat 4 (Enduro) and Cat 5 ( Downhill), meaning that we can offer a lifetime first-owner guarantee.
The S.200 is available in limited numbers while we scale up our production capacity, so don’t delay!
We are offering 3 standard builds, plus a mini-mullet option for the free-riders, park rats and shorter riders, plus a frame-only option – Prices start at £4,999 for a full bike.
Hello guys, I'm Gee Atherton and this is the S200, our brand new aluminium downhill bike,
fresh from Red Bull Hardline.
As with all of our bikes, both the A and the S series, the S200 is built different.
We brought world beating technology to Mhuntleth, mid Wales to give you unrivalled fit, strength
and performance.
There's no better feeling than being absolutely top speed on your downhill bike.
Whether you're a racer, a park rat or just looking for a bit extra confidence on your
local downhill trails, you're going to have so much fun on the new S200.
But we wanted the bikes we made to be more accessible to more people, not just for the
high end racers.
The S200 offers all the race heritage you'd expect from us, including everything we've
learnt from 12 years of Hardline, 20 years of World Cups and 5 years of the award winning
A Series.
The S200 is built using lug and tube construction and features Dave Weigel's incredible DW4
linkage.
It's super fast, super strong and was perfect for this year's Red Bull Hardline, but Athy
likes to put it through its paces at the bike park as well, on the jumps, on the berms but
he just sets it up slightly different to me.
The way we've designed the bike means we can afford to give it some extra pop and slightly
sharper handling, meaning it's so much fun to ride.
When we founded the bike company, Red Bull Hardline was a massive focus for us.
After spending years seeing so many other bike brands fail at the event, we knew we
had to build bikes that were super durable, super strong and could withstand the abuse
that an event like Red Bull Hardline would throw at them.
When we first thought about making a bike from aluminium, we looked at so many different
ways of doing it, but after months and months of testing lug and tube construction, one
by miles, we used a new kind of approach to CNC to create aluminium lugs and then bond
them to drawn aluminium tubing using the incredibly strong double lap shear joint.
This also means that the joints are moved away from the areas of maximum stress, which
is incredibly important when you're riding tracks like these.
For our seat tube lug, we can't use a double lap in the same way, so we use a bolted and
bonded hybrid along with a custom threaded fixing.
Because we don't weld our bikes, we can use 7075 aluminium, which has a 70% higher fatigue
performance and a 70% higher ultimate tensile strength compared to weldable alternatives.
We use an infinite life design approach, which means there's no fatigue over time and they're
tested to the absolute maximum.
First it gets ridden by myself, by Dan, Rach, the engineers, the race team, the dig crew.
This thing gets absolutely thrashed.
Then we send it off to the labs at EFBE for their famous tri-test, which it passed with
absolute flying colours.
All of our bikes have proved themselves durable enough to withstand the toughest set of tests
that EFBE could devise.
These bikes can withstand anything I can throw at them, which means we can offer a lifetime
first owner warranty wherever you're riding.
Because we hand build all of our frames at home here in Mahuntleth, each bike is treated
with the same level of perfectionism that you'd expect from an Atherton bike.
The S200 is a confidence inspiring downhill bike that loves to be ridden hard.
Capable and robust with a mullet setup and 200mm of rear travel, the bike's super happy
to switch from bike park to racing or natural steep rough downhill trails.
Like the A200, the S200 comes in 12 standard sizes individually fitted for you.
Simply input your height, your inseam and your arm span into our fit calculator and
we'll work out the closest size for you.
We've always been obsessed with how fit improves rider confidence and performance.
All the way through our race careers it was a major focus.
When we started Atherton Bikes, one of the key drivers was to offer that perfect fit
to every rider, not just the elite racers, which is why we offer so many more sizes than
any of our competitors.
Perfect fit means from the moment when you sit on one of our bikes, you're going to be
in the perfect riding position, which is going to have a massive impact on your riding confidence.
It's got the perfect geometry for fast, aggressive race laps whilst the suspension platform balances
the ability to work on those sensitive, fast, loose turns but still hold you up and support
you in those big hits.
All of our S range bikes are built around Dave Weagle's 4 bar linkage.
The World Cup winning DW4 platform brings that incredible performance that we demand
for all of our riders but is much simpler than the infinitely adjustable DW6 platform
found on the A series of bikes.
It means it's much less maintenance and perfect for that chuck your bike in the back of the
van and head out for a ride type day.
Designed for downhill, the DW4's progressive leverage ratio helps the bike to feel at home
and comfortable on those small sensitive hits but still been supportive enough for those
big impacts.
DW4 works with our custom profile drawn aluminium tubing designed to give that perfect compliance.
When we designed this bike, one of the things we really focused on was that balance between
making it playful and stiff, meaning you can pop out of turns but still quite supple and
compliant so it's still forgiving on the fast downhill tracks.
Everyone who works or rides here shares that love for progression, whether it's improving
your fast race times or just doing gnarly laps of the bike park, the S200 is guaranteed
to lift your riding.
We're offering three incredible S200 builds all with 200mm of travel front and rear.
Prices start at £4999 for our rugged and reliable Build 3 option which comes with a
RockShox Vivid base shock, a Boxer base fork and a SRAM GX drivetrain.
Build 2 is built around the Fox Performance suspension range and the super rugged SRAM
GX drivetrain.
And the top spec Build 1 comes with Fox DHX2 shock, Fox 40s up front and a mixed SRAM drivetrain
with X01 upgrades where you're going to feel the most benefit.
All of our S200 builds come with Hayes Dominion A4 brakes, Stans wheels, an FSA cockpit and
Continental Tripletail tyres exactly as I'm running here.
The S200 comes with internal cable routing for an optimum cable life and a super clean
look.
We've used standard fasteners wherever we could and we've concentrated threads in low
cost replaceable parts.
The exception to this is the bottom bracket which remains VSA.
There is also a down tube protector to stop those rock strikes slamming into the bottom
of the frame.
If you're looking for a top quality downhill bike with stunning looks, great performance
that's going to transform your riding and be strong enough to take anything you can
throw at it then look no further than the S200.
To find out more about the bike visit our website at www.AthertonBikes.com
Thanks for watching!
