That's a lot 'butter' - Specialized adds gear in creamy new colour

• Downhill mountain bikers who want to add some new product to their winter riding kit have trendy options from Specialized.
  
• Specialized's new Gravity apparel range offers a fashionable butter hue, if you don't like riding in dark colours.
• The Cannibal tyre has been revived, too, for heavy duty descending.

Specialized's newest mountain bike kit is for those riders who love steep, muddy, and technical trails.

The American brand has added extreme riding gear with a unique colourway and a tough new tyre, specifically for extreme downhill riding.

Some of the world's best downhill mountain bikers ride in white. It might be counterintuitive, but white is the base colour for any reigning world champion's jersey, with those iconic rainbow stripes across the chest.

Butter on the bike

Apparel designers at Specialized have tried something different with this season's Gravity range of jerseys, pants, baggies and gloves. Going beyond the irony of white mountain bike gear, Specialized's latest Gravity range is butter coloured.

It might show a little less dirt and mud, but there's no questioning the originality of butter coloured riding gear, which also clashes less with bright frame or helmet colours.

The butter colour Gravity range, includes tough pants, with abrasion pads. But they don’t have pockets for snacks or your Smartphone. (Photo: Specialized)

A comeback for the Cannibal

Specialized is one of the few bike brands with a tyre range. For riders who need the grippiest mountain bike tyres, there's a new option for those treacherously steep descents.

Product specialists at Specialized have revived a legendary name from the brand's tyre portfolio: the Cannibal. It might be a name closely related to the greatest cyclist of all, Belgium's Eddy 'the Cannibal' Merckx, but Specialized has a legacy with the name. It produced a Cannibal mountain bike tyre in the 1990s.

The second-generation Cannibal is a dedicated enduro and downhill mountain biking tyre. It sacrifices weight and rolling speed for grip and puncture protection.

When traction matters more than anything else, you get a Cannibal. (Photo: Specialized)

Heavy but tough

Available in a 2.4" casing width, for either 29" or 27.5" wheels, the tread design has a centre tread pattern of dual- and single-blocks, which support traction when braking on steep and muddy trails. A notable feature of the Cannibal tread pattern is its lack of siping on the edge blocks.

This new extreme mountain biking tyre from Specialized is only available in the brand's Gripton T9 rubber compound, which is its grippiest. But also the slowest-rolling.

Adequately reinforced to resist puncturing, these Specialized tyres aren't light. The 27x2.4" Cannibal weighs 1365g, with the 29er version being 1397g. Heavy. But tough. And when you are rolling downhill on steep trails, reliability matter a lot more than weight.

Sidewall graphics matters to some riders. And this is a pretty cool name, to have on your tyres. (Photo: Specialized)

Subscribe to News24's weekly cycling newsletter, The Cyclist.