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Heard in a podcast that Sam Hill hated that specialized bike the most of all out of the many bikes he has ridden in his career
What did his wife think though?
An athlete of his caliber has got to have a team manager or someone coordinating his travel and accommodations who handles this type of stuff for him, no? And on the flip side, it’d be pretty annoying to be on the UCI and spend a bunch of time keeping track of athletes, and the same athlete continues to fail the same task.
Especially at an outfit as pro as Trek Factory Racing…red tape navigation and staying current with all the boring shit has gotta be on day one of team camp, right?
I love any Romanian actually named Vlad, and I enjoyed R.Warner saying it. He’d kind of run it together vlaDASKaloo. I seem to remember Dascalu reminding everyone that he pumped higher watts than MvDP after a race though—xc / road racers are among the most desperate/ insecure men on this planet, but it stood out to me like dude are we talkin bout practice???
whatever. Whereabouts Failures is a great band.
And the next iteration bike was hated by Bruni aswell.
From the monkey forum:
"The bike he had at the start of his contract with spesch was shite and he and Jack had to break some hearts at the headquarter but now he reckons that he has the best bike in the field also thanks to the tight relationship with Öhlins."
" I said zero to defend "newer/flashier". Where did you read anything defending them in my post?"
That is the implication of saying that I am susceptible to marketing and thus think the bike is important. My point is that the new bling that Forbidden has their athletes on may be slower than the conservative bikes that riders had success on last year. I am comparing THE SAME RIDERS' results between years.
Here is the data in graph form. His finishes in EDR for 2022, 2023 & 2024.
It appears he is merely inconsistent, not handicapped by his bike. He will no doubt have an explosive placing once or twice.
You're simply viewing his results with "recency bias".
This is a major responsibility of the athlete at that level. They all know it and deal with it. It's part of their daily/weekly routine. For someone at the level of a Van Der Poel or whatever, they probably have a very close trusted associate that manages some of it. But Vlad likely does it himself (as most all of the XC pros in MT
and knows the importance of it.
If you followed doping in road cycling over the decades, Whereabouts checks are VERY important to the process. Athletes used to know when they were going to get tested (usually at races) so they would just scheduling their doping so that they wouldn't have high levels during test periods. The surprise testing is how they're catching people--and how do you surprise someone when you can't find them to test them? This is why it's an integral part of the process. I've always liked Vlad, but if you've had 3 of these violations in a year, you're more than likely up to no good-hence the stiff 17 month suspension.
For years I had CX neighbors on the Blood Vampire whatch list.
Vlad did it wrong. It’s absolutely impossible to forget to update them. It’s your own personal responsibility- nobody “forgets”.
No excuses
People interested in mtb gear performance and mtb athlete performance have never had easier access to data than we do now. But I think the insights it's possible to draw from those data are pretty limited by some members of the comment section's refusal to think about inconsistency. Yeah, it's super exciting when the top 5 are sitting on the same second. No one wants to take the excitement away, but you may also here for what can be learned and maybe applied to another rider or the next race. So it's not to be a wet blanket on the cowbell party to think about to what extent some of these data are random. Or if you can't abide randomness 'cause God doesn't play dice or competition is all about the meritocratic sorting of the best from the rest and not luck, choose to say 'unpredictable' rather than random and carry on.
Re-run the race 10 times and not only would we not expect the top five each time to fall within the same second, but the order and even membership of that five riders may change, a DNF suddenly #1 or #5 getting bumped out to #6. Not saying anything that everybody doesn't already know, right? So what's the point? The clock can distinguish a winning time by a thousandth of a second, but some uber-bike or custom tune that gives the rider a 00:00.005±0.0025 advantage is rarely going to change the final result of a race and is virtually impossible to detect because of rider inconsistency. A bigger hypothetical advantage would be easier to detect, but it's not obvious that any really big advantages (other than holistic stuff like "full factory program") exist right now.
It stretches belief that anyone in the pits has some widget that's consistently worth 2%(?), 5%(?) advantage over their competitors; I would want to see the data for even 1% (Flight Attendant?). But go any smaller and it's basically invisible against the background noise. It doesn't help that every content creator with a power meter or a suspension DA setup is out there saying whatever they can imagine is going to get more views, raising expectations for some kind of predictable obvious improvements we can simply slap onto anyone's riding in a simple additive way. I think you'd learn more from a stopwatch and a log book but everyone has gotta work with the algorithm I guess. Welcome back fans to the world premier of my reaction to his unboxing of the KnobGenius durometer and smart siping system.
Use the promo code SICKFOILHAT2024 for 10% off your next purchase dewormer at Pet Food Express across the street from the bar with trivia on Tuesdays.
Athlete performance is the hardest variable for a team to control/is largely uncontrollable. Consistent performance is a skill learned from experience and only mastered by some. Bike performance outside of mechanical failure is a very controllable variable.
With a sport with as many uncontrolled variables as mountain bike racing (especially gravity disciplines), teams will spend incredible amounts of time/money to dial in the equipment to give their athletes the best chance to perform at their best on race day, but ultimately, the performance comes from the rider, not the bike. I think a lot of people quickly blame the equipment without respecting or understanding the hours spent on any given pro's bike setup. If someone's not performing well on race day 95% of the time it's the racer's fault.
Also worth it to note that some newer tech might provide an equal level of mental confidence for a rider as it does increased performance. Dropping in with mega high tech prototype electro suspension probably makes you feel like a sick mf.
Gwin (re)injured his foot during track walk. Bad luck. Still no official announcement but I'd be surprised if he races a WC this year.
It sucks but it's just the MTBing gods demanding Gwin stay in the booth and save DH commentary. And maybe run a team if he wants to. Gwin is a legend. I don't need to see him get hurt over and over to prove anything. It's never nice when a boxer boxes too long or a racer races too long etc
Edit: I'd still love for him to just shoot his shot at World Champs for as long as he qualifies or whatever. Crazy that he's not got one all these years.
This third picture is much sadder now. Seems like he's not announcing it: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7Ew5MAxFGh/?img_index=3
Neko said in a podcast (sorry don't remember which one) that Angel wasn't getting along with the bike (in Poland) and that they changed the shock bolt location (drilled a new hole in the frame) to get it feeling the way Angel wanted it. So he goes from not finishing in Fort Bill to a top 10 in Poland. The bike must have something to do with it... But more importantly, I want to know if Neko has tried and or tested the bike with Angel's shock position and if he thought it was better or worse. Does Angel change the shock position back to the original for the next race?? Does this position become an option on future frames???
IIRC he said it changed the initial leverage ratio from 3.35 to 3.45 (ish) because Angel likes to sit in the bike more.
Starts at 38:00 here if you want to hear the the details: https://www.downtimepodcast.com/poland-2024-post/
Edit: had a typo (fixed now); they went to 3.45, not 4.45, thanks to @RiderMikeCheck1 for catching!
B Practice from Poland is live! We start with Dak breaking down the highs and lows of his weekend and what happened in that darn left turn. As always, he's got some rad insight into his headspace when things don't go exactly to plan.
I thought 4.45 sounded insane, so I listened to the podcast. Hard to hear with the siren, but he said they went from 3.35>3.45.
Dak said they were on 5-minute gaps for Poland, is that new this year or have I not been paying attention?
Stoked to listen to this one! Ft William was solid B Practice squad
Awful.
Did the rock say "e13" on it?
Yeah its rough. Its all for a tighter tv package. Which, who the hell watches DH besides people that are already sold that this sport is rad. I'm a nerd. I watch the full world champs every year. I know some people only watch top ten, but that is what the skip button is for.
??
The 5min gaps for the top 10 plus protected riders give the broadcast the ability to show full runs.
Interesting when they were talking on the B Practice podcast about Danny Hart and Max Hartenstern putting down exactly the same time and whether it has ever happened before. I don't know about race runs, but it also happened in qualifying where Charlie Hatton and Dylan Levesque posted identical times.
Which makes for a broadcast that is just very long. And for trackside spectating it’s pretty lame to see only 40 elite riders with large gaps between them.
How else will they show full runs, if the gaps between riders are not 4-5 minutes. Most tracks are 3:30 or longer for elite men.
In poland, the gaps for last eight men were 4:30, 3:30 for others and 2 mins for the first starters in finals. There were no five minute gaps, certainly not for every rider.
Seems so much of the negativity around all things WC at the moment is just "fakenews" ;-)
https://chronorace.blob.core.windows.net/webresources/20240518_dhi/biel…
I don’t care about seeing full runs.
That's cool. Nice insight, really helpful. Thanks
Yeah I'm of the same opinion. It sucks when time is made up or lost off-camera but it drags the race out so long. Plus if spectating in person it's gotta really make things more boring.
Looking at the new jump built for Hardline, is it time someone has an intervention with Gee?
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