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The Ride Companion's latest pod with Clay Porter featured a discussion about Clay's vision for bringing a "Drive to Survive" type documentary to the world of Downhill Racing. One of Clay's stipulation was the need to have the Pits/Team Managers communicating to the racers during their race runs.
I think we can all agree with Clay's vision of the entertainment value of this content. What I would like discuss is the impacts to the race itself.
Would you as a racer benefit from hearing split times and track conditions during your run or would find it distracting?
How would this change the way races play out?
Nope, there is dick all time between racers as it is, F1 need to conserve tires and fuel and change the balance of the car during the race, what is a DH rider going to conserve or adjust in there 3 min run? They are going as hard as they can anyway so what's knowing a split going to matter?
Mic the riders up during practice if you want entertainment
If Sam Hill knew he was up by 10 seconds coming into the last 2 corners at Val Di Sole World Champs in 2008 would he have taken the inside line and binned it or gone outside railed the berm and have another Rainbow Jersey on the wall?
How many times in the last decade has a rider been up by 10 seconds? Like I said, riders are so close it's not really relevant.
Why does DH have to be like F1? Gets tiring be compared to other sports.
the only improvement DH needs is better pay for the riders.
Could this possibly lead to better pay? Not saying it will but I mean nothing else has really got them better pay so why not give it a shot.
Per the current rules they could be doing this already. I don’t think it would help outside of very specific instances like Sam in 2008 which just don’t happen nowadays with how tracks are designed and the relatively even amount of training. If you’re on a really good run you basically can’t process anything other than what’s ahead of you, let alone converse back to the manager.
This just won’t work. How is a rider supposed to quantify how much to let up. You have a 10sec lead and then slow up and maybe you win bye 3 seconds and maybe you lose by 1 now.
it’s not like f1 or Motocross where you can easily respond to a challenge 1 because you can see the competition behind you and 2 there are spotters on the track as well as continuous tracking of the field.
I'm mostly in agreement with others here that telling the rider to adjust during a run wouldn't be helpful. The one place I do see it being useful for a rider is after a crash or a flat. Let the rider know how much they really lost, and if pushing is still helpful. If someone told Jackson last week he had no chance with a flat, maybe he would have turned it down a notch just to reduce his risk. And we've seen the opposite where a rider goes down but doesn't lose much time, and they back off thinking they already threw it away. But I think telling a rider that they are 0.10 back and need to pick up the pace slightly would just get the rider out of their rhythm and cause more problems than it solves.
I agree and I agree, lol.
It is annoying that every fringe sport has a pitch that starts with "Its like Drive to Survive, but..." And it is especially annoying that people feel the need to modify a sport to suit the viewership of reality tv.
With that being said we live in a tiktok dance culture. Originality is no longer a prized as it once was. People are looking for low brain power entertainment. Like pre-chewed food. Give me something I am kinda familiar with so that I don't have to output too much energy but is just a little bit different.
And views equal revenue.
A product like this could be the catalyst to reverse the trend against privateer racers. Who wouldn't love the story of a racer sleeping in a tent eating PB&J competing against the goliaths of Trek, Specialized and Santa Cruz.
I haven't ever been in a F1 car going around a track, but I have been in a NASCAR going around Darlington Speedway. The noise, the violence, the forces. For the unacclimated it is difficult to remember to breathe and yet the drivers are taking all this in, while maneuvering inches from a hospital visit, while holding a full conversation with their team.
I would venture to guess the World Cup top 10 are capable of processing more information than we can wrap our head around during a race run. I would venture to guess riders have practiced several lines through certain sections that present risk vs reward and I would think based on their splits they might be more or less inclined to take the gamble.
All this being said, I am not fond of this idea. I don't like DH turning into a team event. I like it as person vs nature. I love to watch these athletes giving it their all top to bottom and then to see the emotions as they face the timing board at the bottom of their run. It would be much more anti climatic to see a rider coast across the finish knowing they had the victory in hand.
It will only make it more difficult for the amateur rider. Why change something that is no problem? I can allready see the armada of mums and dads with their Motorola Walky Talkys being agressed by thier kid because they could have said something about a two second gap 5 seconds earlier.
Not every idea is good even if it could ad something that could be helpfull for a handfull.
On the other hand I think that a rider should be alone between the tape and make his own decisions. It is a 3:30 minutes sport. Not 30minutes plus 2 laps.
It doesn't make sense for DH in a race run. Not sure it even makes sense in XCO which is the closest thing to a tour/road race where they do use team radios to communicate strategy/tactics, splits etc. In XCO I presume the mechanic/team staff are just yelling out splits/gaps each lap?
So this has probably been debated in the past but Cedric mentioned during the Les Gets race that the light on Loic’s bars goes green if he’s up at the splits.
green lights on the fork/number plate could potentially be a cool addition for trackside fans. A buddy went to supermotocross in chi and said it was a pretty cool addition as it made the leader discernible to his young son. Think a similar set up would be great in dh since trackside (often with no or terrible cell service) it can be fairly impossible to know if the guy who just went by was on a good run or not.
as far as radio I don’t think it’s gonna be great. I have zero interest in team managers talking to riders and most riders are going to just be breathing heavy as hell trying to maximize oxygen. They have mic’d loic this past season and it’s not a good addition to the broadcast.
Loics lights are for his electric compression damping. Green is plush red is firm.
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