Not often are tires as big as they claim these days, but the Continental Race King 2.2’s are huge, they really fill up the fork arch on the new SID. The carcass is just shy of 60mm wide, and yet they are fairly light for a large volume tire at 488-490gms per tire in the Supersonic/World Cup version. The Black Chili rubber compound is the real key to the way these things grip wet roots and rocks. Even when there is some slip, it’s about 60% grip/40% slip at the worst and very predictable. They roll very fast on hardpack/pavement and grip on loose over hardpack and pea gravel. They do really well in every surface but thick and gooey mud. The short knobs will pack up with thick clay mud.
I’m running these on my Vertex Team hardtail and my ETSX Team and they’re working remarkably well. On a hardtail they really do improve comfort as well as you can run them at lower pressures with the huge volume.
If anyone remembers the first time they rode a Specialized Ground Control when they first came out in the late 80’s and were impressed by how much better they were than anything else available at the time, that’s what the Race Kings are like compared to most other light tires.