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Season ending rankings. Atherton is sitting 21st and would move to 20th with YT going away. Couldn’t grab the point totals but Norco is 2 points back of Commencal for 11th which could become 10th and a 2 year spot.
So just to clarify... The 2025 points follow the RIDER for their 2026 team?
Or do those points lock in to the previous years team and therefore YT's points just vanish for no reason? Surely that's not how the system works and the elite womens winner won't contribute '0' to her new team...
No, points stay with the team. It hasn’t been totally clear in yt’s situation but yes it looks like they vanish. She’ll contribute zero points at the start but will carry a team up the ranks by herself. She alone would have been ranked 14th in the team standings
The amount of rims with spokes still attached (hub removed) that I saw kids walking around with this weekend would say otherwise to your comment about hiding broken parts. I believe Jackson went through one rim where last time at MSA he went through even more. He bent his bash guard and chain ring (my son has the ring) this weekend. They just change things and carry on.
Most people consider bikes to be fairly reliable these days. Probably a better look to be giving souvenirs and mildly damaged but still workable freebies to the groms than pretend your insanely fast pro rider isn’t capable of breaking a product when the goal is performance and not avoiding damaging your rim.
As former rim destroyer of a team, I can speak to it. NOT a "blame" thing toward Dunne.
Ronan generates force & power with his back, hips & thighs. His speed & insane carving ability are from a center/rear weight bias that produces powerful burst. Who doesn't LOVE to ride that way.
BUT...we all can destroy rear wheels with that technique. I always shifted to a center bias to save rear wheels on race weekends to get by w/ only 1 spare wheel . Hated to race like that.
I'm all for his riding style. When he's on & gets that rear wheel over everything...it's theatre! A winning style.
Downside is nuking a rear when he generate all that force into the rear & a surprise axe head rock shifts.
MSA was a WIN/LOSE race. Maybe...Only person managing the race I'd guess was Luca. "Assuming" his goal was to win cleanly or place high to guarantee top 3 overall & not risk an all or nothing Worlds style run that could push him to 4th OA???
Dunne & everyone else were racing to get 1st & 1st only.
"but it takes me 40-50 min for one wheel build(including taping and insert/tire mounting)"
I was not expecting it to be that quick! That's legit impressive.
Points are calculated at the end of the year, last Tuesday in October. I understand the UCI may want to base points on the performance of a rider within their prior season team, but then why not just set the rule as "points are calculated based on the cumulative points of the riders in the team at the conclusion of the final race of the 2025 season." Instead, they set a seemingly arbitrary date at the end of October, leaving what appears to me as a two week transfer window. There is also some press release or otherwise an announcement about points staying with the teams for the 2026 season, but it is not in the official rules.
Here is what the rule book says:
Mid year transfers allowed the points to go with rider. http://ucimtbworldseries.com/news/whoop-uci-mountain-bike-world-series-…
But the rulebook is silent on what the offseason actually is, no dates. If they are setting a date for the calculation of points, then it would be reasonable to assume that the official offseason starts after points are calculated and the time between the final race and the points calculation is still a transfer window.
I remember watching a race in the 90s where Missy Giove flatted and the tire was off the rim. I remember thinking she was going to damage the rim and not have another for the next race.
YT Mob's episode uploaded by filmer, Ralf Schupp, b/c YT abandoned it.
from Ralf - This is what could have been my first episode for The YT Mob covering the 2025 season. Take an authentic look behind the curtains of one of the most victorious Downhill racing teams out there. When and how to even start to get ready as a team for the upcoming season? How can you manage stress and pressure as an athlete? What does it take to manage your logistics during back to back racing? You'll find out in this video.
Due to the insolvency of YT Industries GmbH the team unfortunately is history by now. Farewell, we´ve been a cool and punchy bunch!
Screencap from the video
Apparently I opened an angry can of worms with my original comment... But just so it's clear: he missed finals in Loudenvielle because of wheel failures in both Q1 and Q2. I know riders break stuff, and some tracks are worse than others, but that just seems like a completely unacceptable mechanicals rate on that track in particular.
All I'm saying is his team should spend a considerable amount of the off season testing proto compounds/inserts/rims/glue/blowtorches/tubular tech so they would have a consistent podium rider.
Deep dive series into the 2025 EDR season kicking off on the MTB World Series channel:
Just wanted to chime in, and I know I’ve said this here before, but this is one of the hardest parts of being a privateer. Hard to fly halfway across the world with five spare wheels, let alone have them set up and waiting in the car park with rotors, cassettes, and tires mounted. Being able to confidently obliterate wheels in practice with no consequences is a pretty huge advantage when practice time is so limited. The alternative to spare wheels is running too much tire pressure (which obviously sucks) or riding gingerly (which kind of defeats the whole point).
Andreas Kolb’s 2025 World Cup Season: A Tale of Two Halves
The first half of Kolb’s 2025 was not what one might have expected from him, especially considering that from 2022-2024 he finished 4th, 5th, and 6th in the Overall: In the first 5 races of 2025 he managed only one top 10 finish, failed to qualify for one race and got a DNF in another. After 5 races he was 21st in the Overall standings, with only 248 points.
Then something clicked, and he put together a super-solid second half: In the final 5 races he had 2 podiums, finished 7th or higher in each race, and added 754 points to finish 7th in the Overall. (I think there were only 2 or 3 other men who picked up more points in the last 5 races than he did.) Especially considering the uncertainty surrounding his team, that's a pretty fantastic demonstration of grit, talent, and determination.
It was mentioned that he detonated the rim on Q2 due to his own petulance, that he was riding angry and tried to destroy the same rock with his rear wheel. So, maybe there's something to the idea that his wheel destruction is largely due to his riding style and attitude. For my own entertainment I hope he doesn't change, I love his riding style and who doesn't want to watch a rim disintegrate, I have Oli Clark's rim exlosion at hardline on loop.
so is Norco headed to Peru for the Continental race this weekend?
At US Nationals, everyone was squatting in tents all over the mountain, so none of us had anything to do when not practicing. So you literally hung with the team guys & mechanics in the pits out of the way & listened to stories.
Kovachi Wheels used to be at all Nationals & John Kovachi was simply amazing. He'd spend every minute of every day just lacing up wheel after wheel & his crew of workers/racers were infectious too. Brent Ratelle & all their "slalom" specialists (BMX pros mostly) introduced me to Sun Wheels. That crew made racing possible for me.
Sun let us have a once a year group buy w/ a small credit. We ordered an insane amount of rims. Eric Rucker kept encouraging us to order more & more. Seemed so excessive.
We went through wheels like bottled water. Pro teams would be tearing & building wheels non-stop all day & all night.
Point being...rims, wheels & tires have come a LONG, LONG way since Mavic & Sun threw a million of them at the sport for us hoonigans.
As the parent (and primary financial sponsor) of a younger racer... I've consistently tried to get my son to prioritize finding a wheel sponsor. My worst experience was him blowing up a rim during practice at Glorieta enduro a couple of years back and biting the bullet for Rocky Mountain Wheelworks to build up a FR541 for race day and thinking, "Sure, I had to pay for it... but at least he's got something bombproof on, now." Then him denting that wheel and flatting when forced offline due to overtaking a racer who wouldn't pull over in a rock garden on the second stage of the day. Good times; especially because the racer he overtook was an adult amateur who insisted on dropping in front of him, claiming he was a coach for another junior and needed to drop behind him ( he wasn't).
Wheelworks actually bent it back and got it reseated for him to finish the day... but the lesson is that there's no such thing as an "indestructible" wheel.
He was injured in winter and wasn't able to get properly used to the new bike.
Thanks man I would say that's the standard among the paddock. Some legends are definitely way faster than me but we get it done 🤙.
Is this guy an AI or what? 🤨
Would make sense that they would test that stuff here and other forums.
It takes me 40-50. In just get spokes in hub and in right holes on rim let alone the hard part 😂
Was up at Snow Valley yesterday and there was DH race. I thought cool another local race. The. I hear there is 17k on the line. I was like WTF?
https://www.bigbearmountainresort.com/things-to-do/events/valley-series-2
that's legit! was it well attended? had no idea this was happening. really cool.
Holy shit the Goldstone's house just burned down. Bailey posted on IG. That's go to be an emotional rollercoaster of a week after Jackson just won the overall. She thankfully wrote that everyone is alright. It still fucking sucks though.
There was quite a few racers maybe 100 or so mostly younger racers. I had no clue there was a race until I got there.
15 or so racers in opens men’s and 6 in open women. It wasn’t exactly a difficult course but still nice lil paycheck for a pro especially if your from SoCal.
Results
https://results.raceroster.com/v3/events/dg6ns2tqkq2jftb2
Yep we went yesterday. I almost always see Bronson with his BMB bike when I go. He won his cat as well.
It's crazy not only does SV do those sorta local races as a series, but SkyPark does a similar local race series in their tiny little park.
It would be fun if they did a sorta 'enduro' race day, and you basically had to time every single trail there. Start on Comet, then Treeline, then all the jump / flow trails.
There has kind of always been local races. There use to be lots of enduro races outside summit but fires. They use to have races across the street from Valley at that area. I wasn’t shocked by the race but a $17k prize pool for open class. Let’s not forget that is more than what a World Cup pays for 1-3.
One Up put on a local dh race k. Squamish yesterday. Diane Jewett took the win by 12 seconds over Jesse Melamed. Most of the local WC pros are enjoying the off season already but Gracie swept the Grom race. My kid was filming and said the crew that did the US monster series is doing a race recap vid.
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