Normally, you wouldn’t expect a design taken from a downhill bike to be all that impressive at opposing gravity, and normally you’d be correct. But it just so happens that the new Demo pedals rather well. According to Specialized, the Demo product development team basically stumbled upon an efficient pedaling platform while on the hunt to optimize a more rearward axle path for the multi-year Demo redesign project—a project described as the most extensively researched, tested, and iterated of any bike the company has ever developed. Why a company would dedicate so much time and resource to a bike they’ll sell hundreds, not thousands of isn’t totally clear, though things do come into focus when realizing how brilliantly the trickle-down worked.

The Enduro’s climbing chops makes it special for Specialized, but what makes the bike extraordinary in a sea of spectacular steeds is what happens when you point it downhill. The first thing we noticed was how instantly comfortable and easy it was to achieve and maintain eye-watering speeds. It sort of feels like you’re riding on an entirely different course altogether. Intimidating sections we had a hard time cleaning on other bikes were behind us before we even realized we’d gotten to them. You know that moment in “The Matrix” when Neo realizes he can read the Matrix and suddenly the rules of gravity and physics no longer apply? It’s like that.

The bike chews through terrain in a way that makes you feel invincible. Each tester came away from their lap reporting their fastest time. Anthony Smith reckoned it was the fastest he’d gone on a bike in all of 2019. For me, descending the Enduro is a laugh-out-loud kind of experience not just because of how secure it feels, but because it contains a very special blend of downhill-bike plow and trail-bike play. It pops out of corners like an Evil Following but will devour anything in its path and remain composed on even the steepest of tracks. We think that the bike’s ability to remain so composed when shit is hitting the fan comes from the built-in brake jacking. People call it anti-rise now because it sounds better, but basically what it means is that when you pull the rear brake, the shock won’t extend as it has on pretty much every Specialized FSR that has come before. The benefit here is that the bike is kept from pitching even farther forward on steep terrain or under heavy braking, which would steepen the angles and make things less controllable during the most crucial moments. Adding anti-rise makes it so there’s technically less available travel under heavy braking, but the idea considers that the bike’s dynamic geometry plays an important role in maintaining predictability in unpredictable situations.