Neko Mulally wins Sea Otter DH on a 32-inch mega-mullet Frameworks

Neko Mulally won the Sea Otter Classic downhill on a bike nobody had in their bingo card: a custom Frameworks mega-mullet with a 32-inch front wheel and a 29-inch rear. The victory wasn't just a personal milestone for Mulally — it was the first time a mega-mullet setup had won a downhill race, turning a setup that had barely been spotted at the venue days earlier into an actual result.

Mulally's custom build pairs the Fox Podium fork — travel dialed back to 140mm to keep the 32-inch tire clear of the crown at full compression — with a Maxxis Aspen up front, its logos blacked out, laced to a Race Face Vault hub. Out back, a 29-inch ENVE M7 carbon wheel carries a Continental Cross King. The rest of the spec is familiar Mulally territory: TRP brakes and DH drivetrain, 5DEV cranks, and a Fox Transfer Neo dropper with Performance Elite stanchions. One unusual detail — an externally mounted tuned mass damper sitting beside the head tube.BikeRumor

The production 2026 Frameworks DH that underpins the race program uses a Horst-link layout with a vertically oriented shock and between 204 and 209mm of rear travel depending on which of three progression settings is selected. The frame combines an aluminum front triangle — now built in Taiwan rather than in the US, unlocking butted tubing and a lighter two-piece bottom-bracket and main-pivot housing — with a carbon fiber rear end. Geometry is built around a 63-degree head angle, 342mm bottom-bracket height, and size-specific chainstays ranging from 444mm on the Small to 468mm on the XL. The frame retails at $3,999 with a Fox Float X2; the first 2026 batch has already sold out.Blister

Frameworks is Mulally's own boutique brand, built from the ground up as a World Cup-capable race machine developed and documented in near-real time through his Bikes & Big Ideas podcast. The project started with hand-welded US frames and has grown into a small but serious race operation. Moving production overseas was a calculated tradeoff — it cost some of the made-in-America cachet but opened access to better tubing specifications and higher build volumes, with another frame run planned for later this summer.Blister

Alongside Mulally, Asa Vermette is racing a Frameworks DH in the Elite World Cup field this season. Vermette — Red Bull Hardline winner, multiple Junior World Cup and Junior World Championship titles — steps up to Elite on a size L frame running Fox 40 fork, Fox Float X2, TRP EVO DH drivetrain and brakes, ENVE M9 wheels, and his signature 5DEV 165mm cranks. His build runs the standard 29-inch front and 27.5-inch rear, without the mega-mullet experiment. With both Mulally and Vermette now representing Frameworks at the World Cup level, the brand's visibility in the gravity scene has shifted from curiosity to genuine contender.PinkBike

Sea Otter's DH course is smooth, fast, and pedal-heavy — the conditions most charitable to unconventional setups. Whether the 32-inch front wheel and 140mm-travel fork would survive a full World Cup descent is an open question. But the result adds hard data to what had been purely theoretical: a larger front wheel improves rollover and stability on specific terrain, and at least one race has now been won on that premise. For a sport that has spent years debating whether 29-inch wheels belonged in downhill at all, a 32-inch winner at a national-level race is a notable data point — even if it arrives courtesy of a course that plays to the format's strengths.BikeRumorBlister