500g of added weight and 160mm cranks: Laurie Greenland tells all about his custom Santa Cruz V10 downhill superbike
Greenland, who rode the bike to a third-place finish at 2024's Mont St Anne World Cup, speaks to off.road.cc at Bike Park Wales about the choices behind his setup
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Downhill is often referred to as the Formula One of mountain biking, and with riders tackling the gnarliest of terrain on otherwise off-the-shelf bikes (to a point), it comes as no surprise that riders tweak, adapt, and fettle with their bikes to eke out every inch of performance. That's exactly the case with Laurie Greenland's Santa Cruz V10, the race bike that took him to third at Mont St Anne last year, which is 500g heavier than it should be thanks to addition of weights in the bottom bracket area. We caught up with him at Fox Racing's Hit The Park event at Bike Park Wales to chat about that very bike.
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The V10 is Santa Cruz's downhill bike, and as is becoming increasingly common amongst these bikes, it's rammed full of adjustability. That's to help the bike conform to the rider's needs at each stop on the UCI Downhill World Series calendar.
For the V10, this means a flip chip at the rear axle that allows for +/- 5mm of chainstay adjustment, a reach adjust headset for +/- 8mm of reach adjustment, as well as a flip chip at the lower link for tweaks in both bottom bracket height and head angle.
2025 laurie greenland santa cruz v10 tt.jpg, by Liam Mercer
"I play around with this bike quite a lot on the geometry from track to track. It's one of my favourite things about the V10", said Greenland.
As for the spec, the 28-year-old is running Fox suspension with a 40 Factory up front handling 200mm of travel, and a DHX2 handles the rear's 208mm. OneUp Components provides its V2 Carbon Handlebar, while the drivetrain is supplied by Shimano and its Saint M820 setup. Shimano also sorts the brakes, but Laurie uses the brand's XTR setup with 200mm rotors. Wrapping up the bike is a slew of Burgtech hardware.
"We've got the brand new Fox shock on there, which has been really special for me. It's given me pretty much exactly what I've wanted. A couple of things that I wasn't completely sold on have been made to feel better than I had hoped.
2025 laurie greenland santa cruz v10 rear suspension.jpg, by Liam Mercer
I ride kind of weird, I'm very heavy in the feet. I tend to blow through the rear travel very easily. It's something to do with the way I ride or work the ground - I like to punch into turns quite hard so I normally end up on spring rates that experts say are too high for my weight but when you bolt some telemetry on the bike you can see what I'm saying straight away and it's not equal."
"We've also got something slightly new going on in the fork. I actually don't know what it is, but what it is, it's treating me very nicely. I'm not totally sure what that is."
2025 laurie greenland santa cruz v10 grip.jpg, by Liam Mercer
On the subject of Greenland's cockpit, he chooses to run slide-on grips as he likes his grips to be soft and thin.
Adding weight to downhill bikes is another thing that's grown to be very common on the elite-level downhill circuit, especially with bikes such as the Orbea Rallon being built to accommodate a range of weights. Laurie is running around 500g of extra weight around the bottom bracket, which we believe is in the form of lead stuffed underneath the downtube cover.
2025 laurie greenland santa cruz v10 bb.jpg, by Liam Mercer
He said: "I've played quite a lot with where it's positioned. Having it centred around the BB makes the bike feel so balanced."
"The weight suspended between the two wheels for me just gives it such a planted feeling. Almost like an e-bike, but with an e-bike, the weight creeps up the downtube, and it doesn't make it feel as good. But if you get it away from the top end of the downtube, it feels really good."
2025 laurie greenland santa cruz v10 rear.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Greeland then runs a 160mm crank:
"I don't have the longest legs, so there's no point in me being on the same crank length as Greg Minnaar."
"It's been cool to see the bike industry listen to what feedback some of the riders had, where there's been an industry standard, but I'm not going to ride the same handlebar width as someone a foot taller than me, so why would I run the same crank?"
2025 laurie greenland santa cruz v10 o chain.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Additionally, Greeland is also running an OChain, a crank-mounted device that's designed to reduce pedal feedback. This particular model is adjustable, and Greenland says that the setting gets changed according to the track he's riding.
As a Santa Cruz rider, it comes as no surprise that this bike rolls on Reserve wheels, but these ones aren't available to the public yet. Through the off-season, Laurie and Reserve worked to develop whatever this new wheelset may be, working through different materials and layups, settling on a carbon rim
"I found these new carbon rims to be more forgiving than the aluminium versions. They were good, but this new layup they've got going on - I don't know what they've done - but I like it."
As for those wheels, Greenland is running a mullet setup to better suit his height: "I don't think my arse would like it, I don't have the clearance, dude."
2025 laurie greenland santa cruz v10 bar.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Greeland says his best weekend on the bike was a podium at Mont St Anne: "For me, it was coming back from some time off from World Cup racing to focus on health issues and stuff like that, so, yeah, it kind of signified new beginnings."
A member of the SC Syndicate racing team since 2022, we ended our catch-up by asking Greenland about life in the team without a certain four-time world champion:
"It's funny getting used to Greg {Minnaar} not being around.
"At the end of the day, we've got a lot of the same crew about, so the core DNA of the syndicate remains the same. It's a change, but we've got great staff and great people on board.
"Especially for this year, we've got new heads again. We've got a massive team, so you just get on with the people that are in front of you, don't you?"
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