The important one…

Building on the success of their Anthem race bike Giant will also have an Anthem X for 2009 with 100mm travel front and rear in addition to the ordinary Anthem with 90mm rear and 80mm front travel. It remains to be seen whether the ordinary Trance has finally bitten the dust with this in its place or the original Anthem for that matter may soon be gone. It will be a lot lighter, has already won a few races and looks very fast but Giant clearly decided to lay off on the hydroforming side for this one, I was hoping for a really modern curvy racer but the aggressive fast looks of this are still nice. The big visual difference is that the shock is now positioned vertically which has several benefits to the ride and also makes the bike easier to shoulder. The Trance X appears to have the same frame, new colour schemes, the new 15mm front axles and they have bumped the specs up a bit on each model and brought in an X3 and 4 to take over at the lower end. See here for more of the 09 Giant range. Seen bellow, Anthem X0, Trance X0 & X2