Travis Reill
Travis Reill covers mountain biking for Singletracks with a rider-first focus that links trail access, equipment choices, and real-world skills into practical, on-the-ground reporting. As a staff writer deeply embedded in the mountain bike industry, he combines long-term riding experience with frequent trail time to explain how decisions by land managers and brands play out on actual rides. His work spans trail news, policy and safety stories, gear reviews, opinion pieces, and skills features, giving a broad but consistently rider-centric view of the sport.
Trail access, policy, and safety
Reill regularly reports on how trail infrastructure and policy shape where and how people can ride, often using specific towns or regions as case studies. In Oakridge, he covers a proposal for roughly 40 miles of new trails framed against declining mountain bike visitation, showing how investment in trail networks is tied to rider numbers and local economies.
When Nova Scotia ordered everyone to stay out of the woods for twelve weeks under threat of a substantial fine, he turned that directive into a story about the real impact of forest closures on riders and trail communities.
He follows the legal evolution of electric bike access, writing about new state laws that redefine electric bicycle classifications and draw lines between e-bikes and e-motos. His coverage of “e-bike barriers” on trails near Breckenridge examines physical infrastructure that restricts certain bikes, raising questions about accessibility and who gets to use multi-use paths. He also highlights unusual access mechanisms, such as the reopening of a steep funicular shuttle in Pennsylvania, treating it as part of the broader ecosystem that determines how riders reach trailheads and descents.
In addition to these policy and infrastructure stories, he reports on trail safety incidents such as spiked “caltrops” placed on singletrack, connecting vandalism on local trails to broader concerns about rider safety and stewardship.
Gear reviews and mountain bike tech
Gear testing is a major strand in Reill’s work, and his reviews tend to combine detailed product analysis with clear takeaways about who a given bike or component is for. His review of the Lauf eElja e-bike focuses on its unusually low weight and distinctive design, translating those traits into how the bike feels and performs on trail rather than dwelling only on specifications.
In a comparison between the Maxxis Dissector and the Minion DHR II, he frames the piece around the practical question of whether the newer tire is a genuine upgrade, using side-by-side evaluation of tread behavior and braking to guide purchasing decisions. He writes about “The One Major MTB Upgrade that Makes the Biggest Difference and the Ones That Don’t,” explicitly ranking common upgrades by impact so riders can prioritize spending on changes that will be noticeable on the trail. His opinion piece arguing that a single modern 150mm trail bike can serve as a true “quiver killer” challenges the idea that most riders need multiple specialist bikes, and he supports that claim with discussion of geometry, travel, and versatility.
Across these pieces he leans on the fact that he has been riding since 2003, using years of experience to contextualize trends and to distinguish meaningful innovation from marketing noise.
Skills, coaching, and rider experience
Beyond policy and products, Reill devotes significant attention to how people actually ride, often grounding skills and travel features in specific rides and conditions.
In an article on conquering loose trail conditions, he distills advice from a professional coach into three essential skills, presenting each technique with enough explanation that riders can apply it directly on their next ride. His trail report on one of the best backcountry rides in a high-desert trail town focuses on its short seasonal window, making the timing and logistics of access as central to the story as the terrain itself.
A piece on “7 epic mountain bike shuttles for under $10” highlights inexpensive or free shuttle options to big descents, showing a strong bias toward practical, budget-conscious tips that expand what riders can do with limited resources.
He pairs those service-oriented angles with features on unique ride experiences, such as the funicular shuttle reopening, treating the lift infrastructure, the descent it serves, and the novelty of the system as parts of a single rider narrative. Taken together, these stories show that he is less interested in abstract travel writing than in specific ride scenarios, skills, and logistics that shape how mountain bikers experience trails day to day.
Place in the mountain bike media landscape
Reill’s role at Singletracks is backed by a steady stream of staff pieces that span news, reviews, explainers, and opinions, marking him as one of the masthead’s core voices on contemporary mountain biking. Before joining Singletracks full-time, he contributed as a freelance writer to multiple outdoor and mountain bike publications, including Freehub Magazine, Mountain Bike Action Magazine, The Loam Wolf, and Bend Magazine, which places his current work within a broader portfolio of bike-industry coverage.
Within Singletracks he has authored some of the outlet’s notable recent articles, including the 150mm “one bike” opinion and early coverage of public confusion over the difference between e-bikes and e-motos. His consistent focus on the intersection of trail access, equipment, and rider experience sets him apart from a generic sports reporter; he writes as a mountain bike specialist whose stories are anchored in the practical realities of riding and maintaining access to the trails.
4 more sports journalists.
Adair Reid
Adair Reid is a sports columnist for The Cavalier Daily who covers Virginia men’s programs with a blunt, fan-aware voice that treats them as long-term projects rather than one-off games. He focuses on trajectory, legacy and risk, using opinion columns to question coaching decisions and program strategy while grounding his arguments in recent results, records, tournament performance and roster realities. Men’s lacrosse is a recurring subject, and his work on the program’s coaching change shows how he uses a single decision to examine overall health, standards and competitive standing. He frames games in terms of stakes, identity and institutional expectations, emphasizing postseason implications, recruiting, national perception and alignment with a championship standard. He writes mostly in the first person only when needed, keeps the spotlight on institutional choices and brings analysis-first, evidence-based judgment to Virginia’s flagship men’s teams.
Adam Stern
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Albert Burneko
Albert Burneko writes about how systems of power bear down on ordinary people, using sports, politics, technology, food, and domestic life as entry points. He is an assignment editor and writer at Defector and part of its founding ownership group. His politics and capital reporting examines how policy, policing, and public rhetoric turn into harm for specific people, centering victims and vulnerable people. He also covers artificial intelligence, media criticism, and technology’s effects, asking who benefits and who absorbs the costs. His domestic writing focuses on parenting, bodily discomfort, and everyday frustration. His recurring Chefector column turns cooking failures into comic studies of impatience, ego, and routine. He writes sharp reported essays, first-person dispatches, mock explainers, and sports-adjacent guides. His work combines moral seriousness, comic voice, close attention to ordinary life, and a focus on how people live under larger systems.
Albert Samaha
Albert Samaha is a sports investigative reporter who uses games to examine how power, money and culture shape players, workers, fans and communities. He works in The Washington Post sports section, covering global tournaments, migration, fan culture, sports betting, match-fixing, ownership, NIL money, football safety, participation gaps and the changing culture of women’s basketball. His reporting connects events on the field to decisions in boardrooms, betting markets, government offices and law enforcement. He previously reported for BuzzFeed News and wrote for the Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly and the Riverfront Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and The Paris Review. He writes long, deeply reported stories that combine narrative scenes, data analysis, public records, medical records and other documents.