Schwalbe proves they take American riders seriously by offering the
$75.75 Racing Ralph 29er tire. You see, 29-inch mountain bike wheels
remain a predominantly American phenomenon, so the German tire company
didn’t introduce this tire because of demand from European riders. They
did it for us.
Tech features: We rode the 29x2.25 Racing Ralph tire with Schwalbe’s
EVO-carcass and SnakeSkin technology. EVO-carcass describes Schwalbe’s
steeper-angle-of-carcass-threads construction. This is supposed to
increase tire flexibility while reducing rolling resistance. The
SnakeSkin is a fabric that adds puncture protection to the tire’s
sidewall. Triple Nano Compound is the company’s secret brew of rubber
compounds. The Racing Ralph tires use specially designed knobbies,
dubbed U-Blocks, which are directional for either speed or traction. The
tire weighs one pound, seven ounces. Schwalbe, (888) 700-5860.
After the thrashing: We fell in love with the grippy Racing Ralph 29er
tires. They are capped with small directional blocks, and the sides have
a line of edging blocks that do their job well. The 2.25-inch size
feels just large enough to be considered large-volume, and yet is still
small enough to feel like a lightweight trailbike tire. It climbed well
and accelerated from a dead stop without the sense of winding up a
flywheel. The sparse tread pattern sticks like glue on the climbs, and
its rim of side blocks corner with confidence. Riding the tire on a wide
variety of surfaces, including gravel, asphalt, hardpack and even bark
chips, proved that it is a very versatile 29er trailbike tire.
The tire only earns two stars for pure cross-country racing use (you’d
have to ride a Stan’s nearly bald Raven to experience the real deal in
cross-country race tires) and there is no doubt that the $75 retail
price is steep and prevents the tire from earning one more star.
