Jackson Goldstone has dominated the early part of the Whoop UCI MTB Downhill World Series aboard his Santa Cruz V10 downhill bike. Aside from the first round in Poland, the 21 year-old has won three rounds on the trot, at Loudenvielle, Leogang, and Val di Sole, and that’s after being off for a year with injury after a crash at the Red Bull Hardline in 2024. So what’s the young Canadian riding? We snuck into the Santa Cruz Syndicate pits and took a nerdy deep-dive into the details of his Santa Cruz V10.

Off-the-shelf Vs. exotic prototype

What’s really interesting about Jackson’s Santa Cruz is that it’s a stock frame that you can actually go out and buy today. So while Specialized Gravity is evolving an extremely expensive prototype, and the likes of Norco, Mondraker and Commencal are playing with unobtainable frames with multiple adjustments in terms of kinematics, geometry, weight, and stiffness, Jackson’s bike is basically stock with a few off-the-shelf hop-ups and mods. How’s that for a flex?

From left to right: The CounterScyle mass damper, Jackson’s medium race bike, and 1.8kg of lead weight strapped to the down tube.

Geometry settings

Kicking off with the frame, Jackson runs a stock medium V10 frame, and at Leogang (where we filmed it) he was running the neutral headset position and the long chainstay setting. Which, if Santa Cruz’s figures are accurate, should give a similar reach (452mm) to the chainstay measurement (451mm). The V10 boasts 208mm of rear wheel travel, paired with a Fox 40 with 200mm travel. It uses an MX wheel set-up with a 27.5in wheel at the back.

Weighting games

Lashed to the bottom of the down tube with a Peaty’s frame strap is a 1.8kg lead weight, designed to improve the unsprung mass ratio, and attached to the steerer tube is a CounterSycle mass damper. As this is mounted in front of the head tube, rather than inside the steerer tube of the Fox 40 fork, it will also affect the centre of gravity of the steering assembly. Inside the tube is a 550g weight suspended between two springs, and the idea is to cancel out a certain frequency of vibration felt through the chassis.

Shimano’s new XTR four-pot brakes, a prototype OChain spider, and a Maxxis Test Pilot Asesgai tyre.

No kickbacks

In order to reduce pedal kickback and also chain slap, Jackson runs a prototype OChain spider with up to 15º of free crank movement before engaging the rapid Chris King hub.

Even the fastest riders have to slow down, and Jackson has been bouncing between sets of the new Shimano XTR four-piston brakes, and what looks to be a new Saint gravity brake, also from Shimano. The levers of which are mounted to a OneUp handlebar. Jackson also runs the OneUp grips (narrow), Crankbrothers Mallet DH pedals, and a Burgtec saddle.

Three wins in a row for Jackson Goldstone at the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in Val di Sole, Italy. // WBD Sports / WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series / Red Bull Content Pool

Unobtainable rubber

Mounted to the Reserve DH carbon rims are some special Maxxis tyres. They may look like a bog-standard Assegai/Minion DHR II, but being on the Maxxis Test Pilot program means that these have a tougher casing (he’s not running inserts) and perhaps even a special rubber compound.