This wild new lightweight Olympia F1-X cross-country mountain bike hides about 3/4 of its rear shock inside the base of its seat tube, protected from the weather & elements. Functionally not all that different from the Italian bikemaker’s previous full-suspension XC race bike, this all-new carbon F1-X is certainly a head-turner…
Olympia F1-X semi-integrated XC bike
Just when we thought Bold & Scott had cornered the market of mountain bikes with hidden rear shocks, Olympia drops in on a completely revamped F1-X. The new Olympia mountain bike isn’t quite as covered up, but it seems some of the same benefits are still there, in a frame that is lighter and more technically capable than ever.
What’s Actually New?
The body of the shock and its critical wiper seal now sits protected down inside the frame, while an additional rubber seal where the slider protrudes from the seattube. The F1-X retains complete setup & maintenance usability, accessing the shock via a removable cover at the base of the seattube, just in front of the rear wheel.
The overall single-pivot, flex-stay suspension design is effectively unchanged, with a short carbon rocker link driving the upside-down shock that’s been relocated partially into the base of the seattube. By shifting the shock down and back inside the actual frame, Olympia is able to place the lower shock mount concentric with the main pivot on the same steel axle, for improved stiffness & lower weight.
It also shifts the main pivot slightly lower & back, just forward of the bottom bracket for smoother, more efficient rear wheel travel.
This new more compact suspension layout also allows for shorter 430mm chainstays on the two smaller bikes, but 435mm stays for taller riders.
Keeping the unique toptube pierced by a tunnel to boost front-end rigidity, the new bike also jumps up to a full 1.5″ FSA headset top & bottom that allows for internal cable routing without any external cable ports.
A further of the hi-mod carbon mountain bike’s complete redesign is lighter weight again, dropping 100g of the previous F1-X to come in around 1500g.
More Capable Geometry
Of course, the semi-integrated rear shock is the most striking change, but Olympia has also tweaked the short-travel XC bike to be more capable than ever for more technical XC & marathon races. The bike bumps up its fork travel 10mm to 110mm while managing to lower frame Stack height by a few millimeters with shorter headtubes.
On top of longer travel, the new F1-X also gets a degree and a half slacker 67.5° head angle, a steeper seat angle on the smaller frames, and keeps the same longer Reaches it got in the bike’s 2020 trail-inspired update.
The bike is now spec’d with 35mm stanchion SID forks that can be internally adjusted to 120mm of travel for even slacker, more stable handling to tackle tougher racecourses.
Olympia F1-X – Options & availability
Olympia’s all-new 29er F1-X is technically a MY23 bike and they haven’t yet released either final pricing or an official estimate on real availability – think: early spring 2023.
But we do know at least there will be two complete bike builds – a mechanical F1-X Team 1S build with Shimano XT groupset or the electronic F1-X Race GXS AXS setup – both with FSA components & all0y Miche wheels, or an upgrade to Ursus carbon.
