When Lief Rodgers and Evan Wall announced their new team for the 2026, it was a bit of a shock. The brand, Priority, is better known for commuter bikes. And a brand making a big new investment in enduro kind of bucks this seasons’s trend. But, for everyone involved, the gamble is already paying off.
Rodgers landed a career-best World Cup finish, placing second in Leogang. Not bad for a new partnership and a brand built on commuters, eh?
Rodgers started his season with a win at the Canadian Enduro League in West Kelowna. Hit the podium again at the OneUp Squamish Enduro, which he calls “more gnarly than almost all the World Cup races.” Then headed over seas. From there, Rodgers and Wall headed overseas and he landed another podium there. He’ll race again in Val di Fassa this weekend.
Betting on an unknown
Rodgers admits the partnership wasn’t exactly expected. He says Priority reached out to Wall, then him at the end of 2025. In an era where even top pros are working pretty hard to maintain spots on teams, that was already a bit unexpected.
“I’d never even heard of Priority before they reached out to us,” Rodgers admits. “We were a little worried getting on a bike that hasn’t been race proven. We had no idea if it would be good or not. If it had been a brand that I knew a bunch of my other friends were racing, it’d be a bit easier.”
Rodgers and Wall are quickly proving that Priority’s Vanth is the real deal. Race-proven doesn’t get much better than World Cup podiums in its debut season.
Debuting the Priority Vanth
A new bike means Rodgers and Wall have become the friends people come to ask about the bike. Starting from the CEL race, the Vanth’s attracted attention.
“I parked on race morning and there were people coming up to me just asking about the bike right away. No one’s ever seen it before. So yeah, lots of people asking about it and lots of questions.”
Priority didn’t tip-toe into the world of enduro for its first bike. The Vanth, with its belt drive, gearbox and distinctive high pivot design is the kind of bike that would attract questions, even if it wasn’t new.
All that leads to the obvious question, how is the bike?
“The bike is pretty insane. It just erases bumps,” Rodgers says.
Bringing the belt drive and gearbox to the World Cup
The combination of Pinion gearbox and Gates belt drive, which have been the calling card of Priority since its start 12 years ago in commuters, are a big part of that.
“The bike is so quiet on the descents. I always have people telling me how quiet it is,” Rodgers says. “Where that puts the main weight on the bike is cool. It moves it all from the back wheel to just over the bottom bracket. I was actually adding weight to my enduro race bike last year, two pounds. So I don’t do that anymore. It’s just there already.”
Rodgers says the weight is roughly the same as his old race bike. That puts either bike at a weight he finds more planted. He admits the gearbox did take some getting used to, especially when riding at World Cup pace. But it also has some advantages.
“You can shift through the gears when you’re coasting, so I had to learn that, in a race scenario, I can shift when I’m riding a rough section before a climb and it’ll just be in the right gear for a climb or to pedal out of corners. That took a bit of figuring out but it’s definitely helpful being able to do that in racing.”
These are all advantages Connor Swegle, co-founder of Priority Bicycles, has spent 12 years advocating for. Swegle says that, while the jump from commuter to enduro seems large, it’s a natural progression of the advantages they see in the belt drive and gearbox system. (The brand also does make hardtails that have seen some interesting uses in bikepacking and adventure racing, but that’s still a world away from World Cup competition.) It also makes Priority a brand with proven experience in technologies, like gearbox, that are full of hype right now.
“We really felt we could apply these technologies, belts and gearboxes, in ways people are interested in that deliver on brand values. The overall experience with the bike, the low maintenance factor, the reliability factor, that’s part of who we are,” Swegle says.
While Gates has a $100,000 bounty on a downhill World Cup win, Swegle says the pedalling aspect of enduro fit with Priority’s core values. Add the abuse of enduro racing, and the team is, he says, “A great place for us to hang our hat.”
Add the advantages of moving unsprung weight off the back wheel and towards the BB and a new patented suspension design, and it’s a very interesting bike. And one that’s proving fast.
“This is awesome!” The advantages and payoffs of building a team
Priority may be new to full suspension mountain bikes and to organising a team. But it’s not a new brand, and it has some advantages of its own.
‘This isn’t the only place where we’re hanging our hat,” Swegle says, when asked about the apparent decline of interest in enduro. “We can create success here and, in the mean time, we still have the other divisions of our company.”
While the commuter bikes truck along, potentially enjoying an oil-crisis-driven bump in interest, Priority is busy making sure what they learn in one part of the company makes every part better. That’s over a decade of experience working with just belt drives that goes into each bike.
“There’s so much cross over with it, Swegle says. The learnings in commute world impact what happens in the bikepacking world, impact what happens with the Vanth.”
The bike itself was more than four years in development before Rodgers and Wall dropped into their first race stage. Swegle admits he got so caught up in the development and the logistics of organising and then launching a team, that the payoff caught him by surprise.
“You’re caught up in all of that, then you hear ‘Podium’ and you’re like, wait a second, this is awesome. Like, this is really cool!”
Swegle says the Vanth and Priority Racing Team project has been full of lessons. Not all of them about the bike.
“Canadian athletes are very different than American athletes. There’s a quiet confidence to them. I think that there’s a lot of camaraderie that’s really important,” Swegle says. “And I think the learnings is that there is so much joy to be had in the world of enduro right now. I think there’s a huge opportunity to really show that who these athletes are.”
“The industry direction doesn’t affect the effort that Lief and Evan put in during the offseason”
Swegle’s enthusiasm for enduro is refreshing in a year where that seems unfortunately lacking. If you read the, uh, hyperbolic comments sections of some websites, enduro is in trouble. And it’s hard to argue that it’s getting the same coverage it once was, though 2026 is already better than last year. None of that bothers Swegle.
“People can say whatever they want to. We have a great bike in the Vanth and we have two great athletes that are busting their butts to make it happen. There’s no market opportunity timing consideration that goes into that,” Swegle says in a refreshing bit of perspective. “The headlines and chatter gives people something to talk about but life goes on. These guys want to race. They want to perform. We want to make great products. So the chatter? I didn’t really bear any relevance.”
And, as Swegle reminds me:
“The industry direction doesn’t affect the effort that Leif and Evan put in during the offseason.”
That work is already paying off in spades. On top of the podium, both Leif and Wall were in the top 15 at the EDR opener. There’s still more racing to come, we can’t wait to see what the team comes up with.