Review by Chris Purt

These are three very different tyres and each came into their own this season.

The year started out dry and warm so the Speed Kings were up first. I rode these tyres at Enduro 6, Dyfi Enduro, the Penrith and Builth Meridas and finally the very wet Mountain Meyhem 24hr. The tyre itself is very light with wide spaced medium profile knobbles. This tread pattern rolls very quickly and apprently has won a German award for the fastest folling useable tyre for XC racing. In my experience this was a very versatile tyre for general riding and racing; the tread pattern allows mud to be shedded very easily and the knobbles hook up in the dry and the soft tyre compound allows good grip on rocks and roots in the wet. The only place this tyre failed was in certain sections of the extreme mud conditions of Mountain Mayhem where the knobbles were a bit too shallow to bite into the mud, which to be fair is where only a mud specific tyre can be used (we still came 3rd overall).

Mountain Mayhem was in June and the weather was not getting any better for the near future - so it was time to get out a specific pair of mud tyres. Many people choose Conti's excellent 1.5 Cross Country as their mud tyre, but this is just a little too specifice and narrow for me. I decided to use Edges which are claimed as 1.9 but seem to come up narrow compared to most brands. The tyre features narrow paddles in the centre and at the sides and in my view is how I would design a mud tyre which can also be used for a variety of of conditions (exluding hard pack and tarmac of course). The Edges had their baptism of fire at the Bontranger 24/12 24 hour event which was just as muddy as Mayhem but was virtually all off camber single track. The tyres just kept gripping and ploughing through anything they were pointed at. I cannot describe how much I love these tyres especially as they helped me score 2nd place for my team. I also used Edges for Rhyl CC cyclo-cross race last weekend and again they came up trumps blasting me through the mud to first place on my mountain bike!

In August the weather started to improve and I was off to Switzerland and France for some riding in the Alps and the Grand Raid Crist-Alp Enduro. I knew I needed a bit more tyre volume and a few more aggressive knobbles so it was time to fit the Mountain Kings I had the Supersonic model which weighs in at around 460 grams each which is amazing for this type of tyre. The tyre also utilises the Black Chili compound found on the top spec road racing tyres for extra gripiness. Now as you can imagine the Alps are full of technical rocky descents and the Mountain Kings certainly lived up to their name. During my week away I started to get rather cocky at the amount of grip I was getting and luckily I survived the trip unscathed and most importantly without a puncture! These tyres love steep rocky terrain and they also roll pretty well on tarmac road sections for an aggressive tyre. My last two major events of the year were the Ruthin Merida and the final round of the NPS XC series at Coed y Brennin. Both of these courses were massively rocky and I knew that the Mountain Kings would be the tyre of choice. Two top ten finished pretty much proves that I was right.

In summary 99% of the time I would use either Speed Kings or Mountain Kings, pulling out the Edges when the going got ludicrously muddy, my only criticism is that the tyres I was riding this year were not the UST version. However Conti have resolved this already and now have tubeless versions of all these tyres in their line up.

Thanks to Shelley and Cambrian Tyres for their support this year.