An upside down mountain bike fork? Fox claims to have created a brand new category as the Podium fork breaks cover
Said to get plusher when ridden faster, the Podium uses a 47mm upper and a generatively designed chassis, allowing it to be ridden like a downhill fork according to Fox
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First spotted at Sea Otter 2025 and raced through the EDR circuit under Richie Rude, it's been no secret that Fox has been cooking up something rather interesting, and upside down. Now, the brand has pulled the covers off the new Podium fork, and it's built for nothing but the rowdiest riding. Here's everything you need to know.
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Designed to be ridden like a downhill fork, but built for heavy-hitting enduro, Fox's key aim with the new Podium fork is uncompromising performance. It's said to help the front wheel hold its line at high speed while 'keeping your bike in a familiar range of travel and geometry' in a single crown fork, and yes, it's inverted.
2025 fox podium close.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Without an arch on the fork to give it stiffness, Fox has given the Podium 47mm upper tubes, which the brand says give it serious stiffness along the fore and aft planes. And as is common on Fox's current crop of forks, this one uses generative design to shape its crown to achieve further stiffness. Again, for stiffness, the Podium gets a 20x110mm Boost DH axle in a bid to solve a key fault of inverted forks — torsional flex.
Building the Podium with an inverted layout has meant that Fox has been able to give it some sizey bushings. With a bushing overlap of 175mm, we're told that any flex transmitted to the bushings and stanchions internally is minimised, making for smoother performance. Compared to the Fox 38, there's 32% more overlap and 7% more overlap, and the 40, Fox's triple crown fork, or so we're told. Fox then claims that this design results in the lowest possible chassis friction.
2025 fox podium hero 1.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Reducing friction further is the implementation of the Glidecore air spring, which was introduced with Fox's last batch of fork releases. It's an air spring that has lateral compliance built into it, allowing it to flex with any bending loads caused while riding, essentially decoupling the air spring from the chassis. This means that the air piston can move while remaining axially aligned with the stanchion, resulting in less friction.
As friction in the fork has been reduced so dramatically (says Fox), the brand has had to tune its GRIP X2 damper especially to account for the extra slipperiness. As such, it gets more compression damping than a standard GRIP X2 damper, and the rebound damping has been 'toned down' to compensate for the lower unsprung weight.
2025 fox podium brake mount.jpg, by Liam Mercer
While less unsprung weight is one key benefit of the inverted fork design, full oil immersion is another. A regular suspension fork relies on the movement of the fork compressing and extending to splash oil to the seals and foam rings. As the Podium is of an inverted design, oil is pulled to the seals thanks to good ol' gravity, so they're constantly lubricated. Once more, this should reduce friction.
2025 fox podium mudguard.jpg, by Liam Mercer
Touching back on the fork's unsprung weight, it's a rather serious benefit. As the Podium is upside down, there's no fork lower, which Fox says reduces the unsprung weight quite a lot. That then means that less force is required to activate the fork, or to encourage it to move through its travel, so it should be more sensitive to small bumps while compression and rebounding. Adding some vital protection to the more exposed stanchions, there are a pair of full-coverage carbon fibre fork guards, which are said to be super lightweight so as not to affect that unsprung mass too much.
As the Podium is designed for enduro use, there aren't all that many options. It's available to fit a 29in wheel only (although you can probably fit a 650b wheel with no issue), it comes in 170 mm and 160mm travel options, and with 58mm or 68mm crown diameters. It's only available at Fox's highest-end factory level, too.
As for the price, brace yourselves... it's £2,200. We're intrigued to have a go ourselves to see if it's worth the lofty price tag, so check back for a review in the coming weeks.
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