What do you call a hardtail race bike so light it can put most road bikes to shame? Well, we suppose you could call it a hardly-there-tail, but it actually goes by the name of the S-Works Epic Hardtail. Even while barely registering on the scale, weve loaded it with enough capability to do quite a number on the trail. Welcome to having your cake and eating it tooS-Works style. Working towards the lightest bike possible has long been the race within the race, but at what cost? The battle of the grams certainly hasnt been without its casualties, with hardtail XC race bikes coming to stand for a harsh, twitchy ride at the expense of capability and versatility. But who said fatigue from fighting against your own bike makes you any faster? Instead, recognizing that the fastest bike is more than simply the lightest bike, we said out with the jarred-to-death tail, the measure-your-posteriors-sorrows-by-the-yard tail and in with the avant-garde tail. The ridiculously capable, mystifyingly comfortable, head-shakingly light and all-around fast, Epic Hardtail. Sure, we optimized every inch of the Epic Hardtail frame to achieve the lightest production hardtail frame in the world anyway, but we also prioritized our commitment to creating an Epic Hardtail thats as capable as it is comfortable with aggressive singletrack-inspired geometry, increased tire clearance and a frame obsessively engineered for increased vertical compliance, all while creating a bike that lives and breathes the fundamentals of fast. Such an unbeleivably lightweight yet impressively capable frame deserves a build to match and the S-Works Epic Hardtail certainly doesnt disappoint. SRAMs Eagle XX1 AXS electronic groupset and the featherweight Roval Control SL wheelset lead the charge in dropping some serious grams while seriously ratcheting up performance.

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