Apparently Shaun Palmer is doing some house cleaning. We ran across the eBay link this morning on Facebook, when a friend of ours posted the news to the feed. Those that were following the magazines at the time will remember that this was one of the bikes that helped change the face of our sport.
Listed by the name of dtlover61, the bike is shipping from South Lake Tahoe, Ca. Unless someone else has a collection of bikes owned by Mr. Palmer, this is likely straight from the source. Either way, for a true bike geek, it is a chance to own a piece of mountain biking history. (you know, one of the cool parts)
Up for auction is Shaun Palmers custom Troy Lee Design Painted DH mountain Bike last raced in Cains Australia. This is the real thing, this bike is a collectors item, all original. This bike missed the world championship by .015 of a second in his rookie season. First generation coil over shock Intense M1, Mavic rims, Ringle hubs, shimano XTR cranks, MRP chain guide, 1st generation Rock Shox boxer forks, Magura hydraulic brakes, custom american flag SDG seat, Azonic stem, and Ame OG grips.
Check out a screen grab- this bike influenced the quite a bit of the buying choices of a lot of us at the time. I had those bars, the same Azonic shorty stem, (in a 50mm version at least) King headset, Control Tech seatpost, SDG saddle, XTR cranks and MRP chain guide. Back then, that was the stuff to have.
Visit the listing here
That isn’t the only World Championship DH bike listed either. Also up for grabs is the Shaun Palmer World Championship DH Mountain Bike from 1998.
Also listed in the 1999 Specialized FSR DH bike. Interestingly enough, he ran custom 160mm Race Face cranks- those cranks were short!
I remember several of my friends bought the white Specialized FSR DH bike, just because back then it was the bike to have. Unless of course, you went straight for the M-1, which was the bike the rest of the pros (including John Tomac and Brian Lopes) were running, under various custom paint jobs. I remember following one of the Specialized team riders down one of the fire roads at Ski Bowl in 1997 or 1998- she was just sitting on her bike rolling down the hill, while I was bouncing all over the place on my first generation Heckler and my Rock Shox Judy, being super envious of the full 6″ of travel of the prototype FSR DH bikes.
Even though my bank account is almost running on empty at the moment, I have to say I’m tempted to bid on a few of these, just to say I did. It is a piece of history, from the first rockstar of our sport.
View all of dtlover61’s eBay listings here
Shouts to Cliffy for pointing this out.