What Did You Think of the New World Cup DH Race Format?

I do not like the new format for the following reasons and here are my suggestions as if ESO will actually listen...

1) I don't think the semi-finals on the same day as finals creates a safe racing environment because of the mental and physical stress that racers have to endure before and during a race run. Suggestion: either move semis up one day, eliminate them and go back to 60 racers in the final or create a new format like @taldfind suggested by having a multiple qualifying rounds. This might also level the field a little and give the privateers or smaller teams a better chance at making it to the final. There are pros and cons to each suggestion and then there are logistical concerns with lengthening the race weekend...

I'm not even entirely sure that the semi-final format created a less safe environment but it "feels" that way. Need more data on the matter. 

2) I think the protected rider status should be removed from the semis if the semis are to stay as they are. Again, it give such a huge advantage to those who rode well last season. Maybe you could change the protected rider status to make protected status based on the previous race results. Or just eliminate for the semis. 

After watching post race interviews where the riders were asked this question as well as actually watching the semis and finals, my vote is for Bad. 

I do feel as though ESO implemented their idea well, but still am not a fan of adding to the racing. Adding in semis has made it more like Motocross or MXGP. Yes these are top level athletes that should be able to handle the rigors of a massive race day, but part of the spark of DH was the fact that you only have 1 chance to put together your best run. With semis it has made it to where DH training has to add a little more of an endurance aspect to it. Not to mention instead of trying to push the limits 9 times in a year, they are having to push it 18 times in a year. As the tip of the spear gets sharper every single run will have to be run on the edge of safety. This is going to cause the DH series to end up looking like this years Supercross series where by the time we get to Worlds there wont be any of the top 30 guys left because they crashed out. We've already had top level athletes crash out for potentially the season.

Big props to streaming juniors though. That is hands down the best thing that has come out of all of this.

Was pretty cool to be honest. Way more live-feed time for everyone, especially the juniors. Hope this can be converted into more people who can earn a living racing or supporting racing (from what I understand that group is tiny at the moment).

A fair number of riders (even Bruni and Finn who were part of the riders union) seemed much more accepting and positive than the internet.

After watching, I was mulling over if 2x races with full points would be better (like MXGP) rather than a semifinal, but honestly I think the semifinal (especially free online) gives more live-feed exposure to more riders. WTF on the womens field, give at least 5 more riders a chance in finals- hell cut 5x men and add 5x women. 

Eh I think a 30 rider final is an improvement after seeing it.  Every single rider was capable of a podium.  every rider got a good broadcast window.  no issues like not seeing a winning run.  You can call it super finals if you want but it made for a good show.  Don’t think Jordan Williams wins without it.  Meanwhile the top other guys traded 1,3 and 3,2 and everyone is leaving the first round with pretty negligible difference.  Yet anyone goes 1,1 and they leave the weekend with a huge gap.

seminfinals almost completely missed Phil atwills run.  He got a full showing in finals.  Talk about making a better opportunity for a small team to showcase itself when the performance is there.  This is something that was an issue with RedBull.  Martin maes winning la bresse run doesn’t really exist live.  What you see if you Google it on YouTube was cut together after the fact like a dhse.

weather has effected dh for years.  By adding more racing it only balances things out more over time and brings more interest in a single round.  

semifinals is going to keep privateers and weekend heroes in the sport and finals is only going to help showcase those who perform.  And eso just needs to find the right way to present it whether(semi finals to Red Bull standards) and finals as better or something entirely not done before.  

I was apprehensive as anyone but it’s pretty much the only change in this sport i dug after seeing it.
 

Protected rider status needs to go. Either your in or your not based on your semis performance.

The only other thing to mix it up would be to retape the course between semis and finals so you get a slightly different track. That would be tricky to implement and be safe for the risers though but I think it could be done.

I said I was a fan of the format, but that's only because I think being able to watch Juniors Free and having the Juniors practice on the day of trackwalk with all the Pro riders on track at the time was amazing. 

The entire qualis/semis/finals format isn't great, IMO. It definitely dilutes the finals "win" because now there's so many chances to "win" as well as lose. Also, I envision races where the fastest time on the track is actually put down by the winner of the semis, but the winner of the final has a slower time... which just feels weird.

Because Discovery wants to cut to only 30 for television. 

I'm willing to bet that next year they will cut the semi and go straight from quails to finals with only 30 men's racers. They wanted to do it this year but got too much push back. 

Next year they will say that they heard the negative feedback on semifinals so they are cutting them.

The winner of the race should leave with the most points. I think this format allows for earning the most points at an event and not having won it. On the flip side, rewarding consistency is great. I do hope the title is not decided from a P10 in the semi-final.

I like the discourse here, but I don't want to give a judgement either way. There ideally should be an ironing out as the season goes on.  What might be interesting is how this poll compared from now to October? (MSA)

I like the idea of taking the points from both semi and final, winner has the most points.

I need to bookmark this page for when a weather or injury or malfunction turns a semi-final & final requiring perfect timing and no disruptions into a shit show that sends most riders to the airport for flights home or stranded or fired from their regular job or teams cancelling budgets for next year when they get the over-budget report back.

They could literally just have filmed the 60 man finale and dumped maximum effort into the final 30.  Then if a mega-performance happened in the lower 30 qualifiers, they'd have lots to hype up.  

Even factory teams are going to get burned by this format and in a few years we'll only have Trek & Specialized duking it out with 2 5 rider teams & no privateers or mid-market teams.  

And Bernard Kerr...I hope you find a way to screw over this greedy pricks who think the riders are owned by them and can't produce their own content but should depend on Discovery/OLN only to put food on the table.

No posting of your own GoPro footage or being forced to not provide content for Mevo or DJI or other streaming action cam companies.  If you can't provide your own sponsors with content to feed them...you're choking off money to the sport.

Go back and watch Gypsy Tales and see what happened when SX cut off the JGR Racing and GEICO motorsports teams to keep all the money for themselves.  

 

I didn’t see the finals because I didn’t have time or money to spend on It but I did watch the semi finals and the highlights. From what I saw it looked ok and I imagine that given a few more races to work out the kinks it’ll be better. 
lots of people complained when Red Bull took over from Freecaster but that turned out alright. And RB wasn’t perfect at the start. 

This is the best theory or explanation I've heard. Because the current format makes no sense, but my tinfoilhatbrain says that corporate media overlords are good at making things that make no sense so they can later swoop in and "solve" their own problem without looking like they wanting to do a hatchet job in the first place. Someone earlier in the thread said "I think the new format only serves towards Chris Ball's vision of making downhill like F1, focused on elite teams and riders only," and that's what I always assume is happening here. 80 riders in finals with a mix of lovable privateers, midpack riders on the cusp, and dominant factory riders is great for an enthusiast audience (like us) but doesn't translate to mass media audience (which is what big corporate media always wants). If you eliminate all the lovable riders and focus on a few super teams, you have an easier clearer narrative to sell to Joe Schmo who's changing channels and lands on MTB. I always assume there's a slow creep to weed out the history/core/spirit of the sport and conform it to a mass media audience, I just didn't get how semi-finals factors into that. But your theory about "solving" semi-finals next year by doing what they wanted to do all along and only letting 15 unprotected riders into finals makes perfect sense. Pity if it's true.

from what I understand it was brought in by ESO to soften the change in the cut of 60 riders to 30, I understand they think the sport is more elite with just 30 finalists, and I won't be surprised to see that as the qualifying cut next year. 

IMO many of these riders now in that top30 have slowly progressed to get there, and them doing so provides great storylines when they do get their first podium and so on, removing 30 riders loses all of that.

Here's me hoping some Saudi MTB fan gets involved and creates an MTB version of LIV Golf, to create some competition for their current stranglehold.

It's complicated. As a perpetual fan of underdogs and privateers, this new format seems to make it even more difficult for those groups which bums me out. 

Beyond that, from a purely spectator standpoint I think a lot depends on your viewing habits. If you're the type that has the time to watch all the broadcasts you can, I could see how this quali, semi, then finals format creates a worse viewing experience than the old format. It seems like a lot of the posters here watched everything they could and many ended up with this opinion.

I would considerer myself a pretty big race fan but im also a dad of 2 young'ens, have a more than full-time job and a couple of time consuming hobbies; even with the old RB broadcasts, I would typically skip ahead and watch only the final 3/4 or 1/2 of the broadcast while doing other stuff around the house. 3 hours of watching the whole thing was just time I didnt have. I will say the new broadcast time for finals suits my viewing habit much better. That said, I found the announcing to be subpar and was honestly expecting to see even more of the track based on the hype leading up to this. Hopefully both those things improve. 

I agree.  Something else to factor in is what you & Ed currently dealing with.  #selfieswithWynInTheER 

All of these storylines they want to develop require the riders to be there for the race. In round 1, we've already lost the #2 & #3 winningest riders in history & what seemed like more up and coming riders to the E.R., yet somehow the winningest got a free pass into finals despite multiple mechanicals.

With adding 33% more timed, mandatory runs...I can't help but project there is going to be a dramatic increase in injured elite racers this season.  Heck, it probably even plays a factor in Rachy heading the opposite direction of the next even...with a LEAD!!!

Injuries will always happen, but this format increases that likelihood. Nobody cared that Sexton won SX in the way he did...not even Chase. 

I hope the Saudi money line was a joke. Whilst I'd like to see the stranglehold the UCI and ESO have on downhill racing broken, Saudi dirty cash is the last thing the sport needs. I'd rather the sport faded away than it became another bauble to sportswash a human rights horror show.

More of a joke in reference to what just went down in the Golf world.

Speaking of the gold world, has anyone seen the finish of the Canadian Open? It's awesome!

I can picture Ed or Wyn getting tackled like this dude!!! #securitydetail

https://twitter.com/search?q=canadian%20open%20tackle&src=typed_query
 

As a fan, 5.5 hours was a lot of racing.... almost too much!

I think the Semi is a double edge sword, great for a lower ranked rider/privateer to get some TV time and exposure for sure.

But putting two balls to the wall run (for those that make the finals) will mean fatigue, particularly fort bill and Val di Sole, this will eventuate in riders not riding at their fastest or worst case, massive crashes and injury.

Do you want to see a final where riders are only going 90%? I don't want to see riders crash their brains out either. 

I was promised full race runs, but didn't see the first 30 seconds after the gate, even in mens elite top 10

Why were there so many shots where only the top half of the bike and up was visible? Does the camera crew understand how bikes work?

Why were there random crowd shots during race runs (also see "I was promised full race runs")

Why were there multiple shots from blimp height during a run? Is this racing for ants?

So many camera angles with wiggly shots and quick cuts I couldn't see what was going on some times.

Man that was a lot of top riders out with injury.

Alarm bells went off in my head when Chris Ball stated that since most injuries happen in practice, adding another race run wouldn't increase the amount of injuries. 

As Mark Twain said "there are 3 kinds of lies; lies, damn lies, and statistics". 

While I believe it is true that there are more injuries during practice, there are exponentially more runs in practice that race runs. Everyone who didn't make the top 60 still did multiple practice runs. 

Chris and ESO were being intentionally misleading with that statement and statistic. 

Double the race runs doubles the chance for injury. Having semis and finals basically back to back without enough time to fully recover increases the risk even more. 

Whilst as a super DH nerd it was kina cool to have more racing to watch, I can't see a casual fan let alone a member of the general public sitting through the semi and final.

I haven't seen a decent explanation of the need for a semi final and the only reasonable explanation is the softening up for a cut to 30 next year mentioned earlier in the thread.

If they put the same effort into covering a 60 men/30 women final it would have been awesome. 

The semi just robbed some intensity from the final and having only 10 women sucked!

If they are going to 30 man finals next year, protection needs to be massively scaled back or better yet scrapped.

Also, so many big injuries over the event. That needs to be looked at. Wyn, Gwin, Cathro, Luke MS all out for the first half of the season at least. They all looked like small errors that escalated into big crashes. Is there an element of course design and marking/catch net placement involved in these crashes?

As someone mentioned, this format seems ok at best on a short track like we had,

but when we get to longer tracks like fort Bill, or worse weather, or gnarlier tracks, things could get out of hand really quick.

With any luck, there will be adjustments made throughout the season if needed and we wont see too many injuries. I tend to remember lots of injuries at the first race, but I can't tell if that's because there's more or I just remember them better...

I still think there are way too many points for semi’s. I don’t like the fact you can win the race, but if you didn’t have a great semi you might not come out with the most points in the strongest position. It’s more like a 2 stage mini enduro than a one run for all the glory race like it should be. 
 

I love the fact there is more to watch as I just like watching racing, but it all being in one day caused me problems, I can’t commit that many hours (family) in one go and as I want to watch it in order I ended up having to watch it on the catch-up which is never quite as fun as watching it live.

I also wished they leave one or two camera position undefined till they’ve watched some vital raw or some YouTube content so they can show the actual interesting bits. There were a lot of wide shots and stuff from below with riders approaching. Didn’t really get a sense of what they were riding over or how hard it was

I’d rather the Semi Finals be a day prior, and then just watch a 5-10min recap of it before the Finals. Also, I’m concerned this format is going to drive a bigger wedge between privateers and factory level riders. When factory riders have the ability to go and relax for a couple hours, and have access to a spare bike, it’s got to be way less stressful. Imagine being a privateer lucky enough to crack into the top 30, and the stress of having to get yourself ready to do it all over again in just a couple hours.  Are we hearing anything like this from the riders?

Junior coverage was fantastic to see.  Hearing that Semi Finals screws up their schedule entirely has me even less in favor of it. I’d way rather watch the top 10-20 juniors before final Elite Men than the odd Semi’s. 

Isn't it curious how a lot of the bigger teams riders suddenly shut up over the last few months as racing got closer?

That's 100% pressure from corporate telling them to be quiet.  No way Bruni could be happy that he blitzed practice, blitzed semi's & then walked away with 2nd.  And much of his run wasn't on video.

And the privateers have to keep their protests "quiet" or someone in the mega-corp at Discovery will do like they did the MX privateer letting fans rev his bike for cash to make it to the next race...and get fined.

First off, Wyn, I hope you heal up quickly. You looked broken when Ed interviewed you on Wyn TV on Saturday. He did a great job in your absence but we miss you. The behind the scenes access that Wyn TV provides after the race is wonderful. It's such a good way to wrap up the weekend.

Back to the topic at hand... this realization is sad if it's true. Whittling down the field to 30 riders for finals will be a huge loss for the sport. I hope it doesn't happen but I unfortunately understand the theory from a mass media prospective. We stand to lose some great stories about people clawing their way into top 20 or just making the cut. 

Last year at Snowshoe I remember watching some guy from South America have to redo his qualies run because of a red flag and he squeaked through in 58th place. He was over the moon! I don't want to loose that. Maybe we don't see that on the live feed but I feel like those are the stories that should be told during race coverage.

What I also find so enjoyable about DH and cycling in general is that it is so accessible for fans/enthusiasts. I remember last fall at Snowshoe just hanging out trackside next to you and Ethan and maybe Cathro just analyzing a line or resting and joking around. I saw Bernard on the lift and commented on his shoes and he said something funny back. I spoke with Elliot trackside for a while too. Got to walk down through the last rock garden on Lower Hareball listening to Rob Warner give Steve Peat a ration of shit about something. It was awesome to just be there and interact with everyone I met and listen to y'all swap stories. 

But I also I met a privateer last year at Snowshoe on Friday afternoon after qualies who was packing up his van because he didn't make the cut. He had to drive back to Montreal or maybe Burlington, Vermont. He was bummed he didn't make it but was happy he had the chance. He was a guy with a dream of racing a World Cup, made a 12 hour drive, slept in his van, put down his money (I'm sure he had to have enough points to be able to enter a World Cup but he made it somehow and racing bikes wasn't his job) strapped on a number plate and was able to be on track practicing with you and all the other guys and gals we watch on the tele/laptop/phone during the season.

I get that his story and the anecdote about Camilo Sanchez from Columbia (from above, qualified 60th that day) aren't what we tune in for on a race weekend but without the possibility of those stories even being able to happen we will all lose in the end.

Here's to hoping that ESO keep the main field at 60 and that they will realize that there is real value in keeping downhill accessible to those who truly have the skills to make the cut even if they have to drive 12 hours to the race venue and sleep in their van on the side of the road.