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US National Champs Enduro Stage POVs via Nestoroff
National Champs DH course preview
USAC nationals pro start list.
national champs raw from friday
https://www.vitalmtb.com/videos/features/vital-raw-u-s-national-champio…
National Champs seeding results from yesterday, awesome to see Gwin right up there after so much time off the downhill bike.
https://my.raceresult.com/302078/#0_E121C8
2024 USAC Gravity MTB Nationals | Downhill, 08/03/2024-08/04/2024 : : my.race|result (raceresult.com)
Looks like results are up ! Pretty cool to see the National Champs jersey exchange hands a few times. although a sub 2-minute course is tough to make time on.
Not to be a downer (and many are already aware), but a cat 1 30-39 category rider passed away as a result of injuries sustained during his race run. This caused a 2-hour delay on start times and quite a few riders DNS'd on their race runs out of respect/sorrow.
We had already left since we weren't doing Downhill and needed to get home, but communicated (as well as you an communicate with people in the data vaccuum of Ride Rock Creek) with folks on the ground. Pretty sad and somber situation.
I’ve got friends in that category. Someone please let me know & reach out ASAP!
My gosh, that is absolutely horrible. The rider's family & friends are in my thoughts.
I was not aware of that since I live on the west coast and haven't been checking social media much lately. Thank you for mentioning that.
May God watch over this man’s loved ones. I am so sorry for their loss.
talking to another racer's father on the shuttle up, it was apparently a guy from connecticut
It's heart-breaking to have to post news like this. Scott Huntley is the rider who passed away at National DH Champs yesterday.
Eastern States Cup and many others have so many great things to say about Scott. He sure looked like a shredder and all-around great human. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends as we all mourn the loss of Scott. It's a sad, sad day for our community. Ride in Peace, Scott.
This might should go in a separate thread and is something I was going to bring up after our experiences at nationals. I absolutely love Ride Rock Creek, and I love Neko. I love and acknowledge everything he has done for our sport. So please don't take this as criticism of him or RRC.
That being said: What should be the minimum communication/ cell coverage requirements for a large race event? I realize that our sport often takes place in remote locations by nature (especially enduro). As such, providing adequate coverage may be difficult. But when you're trying to coordinate teams of people (especially young racers) across multiple events and practices and such, having extremely limited cell phone coverage is a significant hindrance. On top of that, USAC was trying to send out real-time communications to events occurring on the ground, and they were often delayed in being sent and delayed in being received to the point of them being irrelevant (I received a text about a podium occurring at 5:30pm at 5:41pm).
Anyway, I'm not sure what's to be done, but for large events, efforts need to be undertaken to increase the ability of teams to communicate. At the bare miminum, the organizers should inform teams/participants that the cellular network might be an issue, and they may want to take measure to create their own comm systems (walkie talkies).
Oh.. and one more: at what point are we going to limit pit bikes/surrons in the spectator areas? Not to be an old man, but the number of very young kids riding them through the crowds at Nats was annoying at best (a kid roosted a family in the crowd at whipoff trying to get his surron back up the hill) to dangerous (a kid on one way too big whiskey throttled his into a group and laid it over). I realize they're extremely useful for teams, especially if you have remote pits, but there need to be some expectations around appropriate use.
(Mods, feel free to break this off into a separate thread if it's better to go into a USAC Nats complaints discussion).
Mobile cell towers would be appropriate for these kind of events, USAC should foot the bill.
Having ran races in ye olden days & not once did cell phones exist, I see no logic in that first part.
Drive to mountains. Plan accordingly. But I'll give you the context & others in the know can step in and clarify anything I misconstrue or recollect from last year incorrectly
2023 Nationals, I watched Clayton, Neko, Rachel and every other staffer of Rock Creek communicate quickly, effectively and efficiently via walkie talkie & get everything they were called upon to do...done & done immediately.
I witnessed & overheard CONSTANTLY last year that the USAC city dwellers were warned WELL in advance that cell or internet were not viable & they needed to NOT rely on ANY form of internet to do their jobs, communicate with riders, staff, medical, etc.
But USAC ignored the warnings and tried to do EVERYTHING via cellular & internet data. Tried to do everything via the cloud, the net, constantly trying to text or call each other on their cell phones.
USAC logistics sucked last year.
Here's the ironic part. I hiked down after finals with other course workers. One guy had lots of gear and seemed sort of official & had been moving back and forth on mountain as others were dverbalizing the USAC issues. I notice the guy is probably more official than people realize so I slide back and ask him what his title is.
He was a consultant for USAC there to observe, take note & provide feedback and solutions for future event management. I just chuckled and said "well, we made that easy for you" and we walked in silence the rest of the way, he and I smirking the whole way.
I was there last year as well, and no improvements were made on USAC's communication strategy or their communication to teams. A devo team from our area was headed there this year, and he was asking me about pit locations, distances, logistics, etc.. this team director is very thorough, and I know he had read all comms from USAC. I said, "Just as an FYI, there is very limited cell phone coverage, so don't rely on that for communications with your team." He said, "Oh, good to know. I'll throw in walkie talkies."
So yeah, your point stands that teams and spectators CAN definitely plan around the lack of network, but they need to be informed to do so. At least there were no timing issues this year (of which I'm aware), unlike last year.
Oh.. and to throw fuel on the fire: the rumor going around at Ride Rock Creek was that gravity nats will be in Bentonville next year. I have ZERO idea where they could build a 2-minute downhill track in Bentonville proper.
Well, that’s a sober, devastating reminder that things can go very wrong at downhill events. Unfortunately, I’ve been at two events when someone died It made me think differently about this thrilling, amazing sport that we do—but I still fo it. Even as a spectator, like at rampage, it’s very conflicted. We love the sport, we enjoy the mixture of speed and skillful, beautiful riding on the edge ….but when things happen, it’s impossible not to hit pause.
Sad condolences to Scott’s family and friends. No one can comfort your loss. And—healing thoughts to all those that were there and are processing what happened.
So sad.
Something ill add, with some pperspective, Usac comes to these events and runsure the show. Rock Creek basically gIves them the land to race on.
There wer timing issues this year as a few enduro racers had reruns. Rock Creek wanted to do it, know the lay of the land etc, but were denied.
A smart review might lead them to uunderstand that ssometimes ggiving up some control is a ggood strat.
I don’t see USAC doing anything beyond the bare minimum for non-Olympic disciplines after the huge step most/all disciplines have made this year and the additional resources that will be added with the next games being at home. This could end up being really great for DH if they relinquish some control as you mentioned, but it could also be an ugly 4 years if they don’t.
Agree but I do feel like if you are in some sort of role that you are needing to have real time communication during a downhill event and you don't account for the fact that there may be bad cell phone signal seems like an obvious mistake.
I have visited quite a few resorts and bike parks and I dont think ive ever had reliable cell signal.
Come to northstar their motto is 3 bars one stars
My $0.02... Yesterday was a tough day for a lot of people. The absolute most unfortunate event that we could imagine, happened. Rumors spread like wildfire once the course hold went into effect. At one point I think most people thought that the event was going to be canceled. I am thankful that it wasn't. I met Scott at the US Open two years ago and I absolutely know that he would want racing to go on despite what happened. He was a great soul and a true racer.
Ironically, my son got to know Scott pretty well the past couple of years and especially this weekend. They are normally in "B" practice together but they moved 15/16 Cat 1 to "A" practice this year. So my boy ended up getting a bunch of clips of Scott during practice on Friday and Saturday. Scott had just given my son his phone number before he dropped in on his race run, so they could exchange clips. Needless to say my kid is pretty upset. What a life lesson for a 15 year old or for a 45 year old (me).
People think "Bad Cell Service" means they need to just walk over there to get it or wait a minute for a download.
Ride Rock Creek there is:
NO CELL SERVICE. NO INTERNET. NO ETHERNET. NO WIFI.
Everyone shows up and gets a huge wake up call to just how "untethered" it.
Only thing you can do is airdrop a pic to "ya boi" 5 feet away.
thanks for sharing that story. scott sounded like a great guy and i'm glad that your son could share in his stoke on the hill. can't imagine having to deal with something like this at your son's age.
i think we're talking about 2 separate issues. from what i saw all weekend, all the marshalls, staff, and medics had walkies and could communicate about conditions and emergencies as needed. they got him off the hill and to where he needed to be as efficiently as possible. no cell service is going to improve that.
that being said, they either need a cell tower/booster or better capacity wifi to improve racer and spectator experience for sure for events like this. i've been there enough to know i'll get a bar or two at the top of the hill but nowhere else. the "guest wifi" at the base was overwhelmed. i could never get on it. i was looking forward to my first podium but learned too late that they did them early while i was out riding some fun laps. later (on the way home) i saw they they sent an email at 3:52 that podiums for cat 2/3 were going to be at 4:00 rather than with the other ones after the pro race. a boost in service for big events would also make things like registration/checking start times/etc. easier.
all that said, condolences to the family. i hope they find a little solace in all of the heartfelt comments and memories that people who knew the guy are posting.
So is Austin Dooley not National Champion?
I saw video on AG’s post of Dooley standing in 2nd w/ no champions jersey.
I know you can give a fastest time of the day at your own race, but how did Asa get “National Champion” in Pro?
Didn't this happen a few years back where there was a junior who posted fastest time of the day at US Natl Champs? I dont remember how that one played out. But my understanding is that Asa is considered the US Natl Champ for 2024 DH
asa is elite and junior champ at the same time. results post up now hopefully explaining why (still a mystery to us as well, didnt know this loophole existed)
matilda melton is jr national champ and bronze elite for same reasons.
https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/news/results-2024-u-s-downhill-mountain-b…
This is what the rulebook says.
4.1.006.
Comment: When a junior downhill rider would score the best time at the national championships, (s)he must wear the elite jersey. The junior jersey is not awarded in this case.
Last year Henri Keifer wore the German sleeve, and Tyler Waite wears the NZ Sleeve this year. I think Hauser also won elite in Italy as a Junior this year.
any idea if that's a new rule? thanks for the info, it's pretty clear/obvious.
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