Jono Church
Owner & Mechanic

BACKGROUND

Jono grew up riding bikes on Christchurch’s Bottle Lake trails and over the past 24 years has ridden everything from DH, XC, Trials, BMX and Cyclocross. His favourites are dirt jumps (Bowenvale) and steep technical tracks (Kataore).

Jono has been a full time bike mechanic for 18 years but it was the move to Rotorua working for Wide Open Distributors that cemented his passion for suspension. He quickly became the Marzocchi Service Manager for New Zealand and in 2012 his skills and experience were recognised by the MS Mondraker Race Team. They had recently changed to Marzocchi suspension and flew Jono to Queenstown to be responsible for the set up and testing of Brook MacDonald and Markus Pekolls’ race bikes.

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Photos: Patrick Fallon & Ezra Newick

The Suspension Lab Difference

Jono has spent the past 12 years focussing specifically on suspension servicing and optimisation.  He believes suspension is one of the most important components of a mountain bike and its function combines many of his favourite maths and physics subjects (Vibration analysis, fluid dynamics, friction, calculus and material properties). Jono utilises his extensive technical knowledge to measure and dissect the different factors that make up suspension performance because if you’re not measuring, you’re guessing!

Jono is a ‘suspension geek’ who is constantly developing new methods of gathering and analysing data. He joined forces with Dr Mat Miller (MtbPhd/BrakeAce) to test how braking interacts with suspension and appeared on the Performance Advantage podcast (Dr Will O’Connor and Matt Miller) discussing MTB Suspension Tuning. 

One of Jono’s current projects is setting up data logging systems with an array of accelerometers to quantify the feelings of comfort and stability on the bike.   He has also been developing his own analysis techniques using the Python computer programming language.  It is this level of innovation and out of the box thinking that keeps Jono and the Suspension Lab at the cutting edge of suspension tuning and ultimately making bikes better.

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