Single pivot + floating brake would not accomplish the same thing, and why would you bother with the hundred other single pivot bikes around. This is a contest about innovation, @U, since a prototype has never been built, you have no idea of the final price nor how the tolerances would affect it. I love my DW trailbike, but you can't say it's better having never even sat on this bike.

to make this as simple as possible, no. 75% of the time the axle is moving in it's travel it is moving vertical with a slight rearward path. It does not mean the axle moves backwards the way you cock a pistol.

Agree fully with NSM. This "contest" is just dumb. Mike is an amazing rider, but doesn't know sh*t about bikes beyond riding them. That goes for many pros, especially pros in the "freestyle" element where improvement doesn't include gathering and analyzing data. Jeff's comments were just sad, I expected a lot more from an engineer. "this needs more development and probably a few iterations"...no sh*t, it's also the only entry in the contest which required actual thought and innovation. For this to hold any legitimacy, the judges would need to be innovative designers/engineers, a pro who may actually ride the bike for its intended use, and some frame builder who does small scale manufacturing to provide input on cost reduction/manufacturability. Sure, it's not ready, but C-C mentioned he didn't have enough time to finish it. However, the kinematics are there. I'd love to ride this back to back with my Jedi. It's nice to see some real thought put into suspension designs.

^needs to stop drinking caffeine and geeking out on bikes. You got my vote. I'd consider much larger hardware on the idler. I've got a jedi and I bent the 8mm bolt with in a week(I'm 165 and I do mash, but I don't have thunder thighs). I mentioned this to chris and he was dismissive of it. Simply using a 12-14mm hollow bolt would have added little to now weight, but mitigated the problem. It's single shear on the jedi, I wouldn't necessarily be worried about the idler bolt on yours, but the bolts holding the idler assembly on the frame. The top tube looks a bit awkward. If you could modify this to use an alfine, that would be amazing. Something like a HD spring loaded tensioner on the non drive side arm + a belt drive. With a pulley next to the upper pivot you'd have minimal growth. It would need a custom hub, but you could make a very light fixed 142mm hub with super wide flange spacing and a disc mount on the current drive side. Hell, you could even have the front made from CF and have the lower box portion removable. With some G10 in the bolt interfaces, and 6-8 well placed bolts it would be solid. Make the frame convertable between standard and gear box...now I'm just dreaming. CF won't be out of the question for too long, Lamborghini and Callaway patented a technology/process to essentially injection mold it called "Forged Composites".