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17:52
I miss the slow motion videos
Bernard's vlog
seems iffy if he will be racing or not. Shame, seemed like he was picking up steam for the season.
Didn't he say he cracked his patella? That'll keep him off the bike for a bit.
Said he was out for the next few rounds
Charlie Coquillard's practice vid
If it's handy while the riders come down, I've got the live splits, sector-by-sector, here at gravitylab.live/live. Hopefully more engaging that the teletext (UK reference) experience on Chronorace. Keeping it updated through elite.
Shout with any comments/improvements as its a live project
3 seconds is enough time to raise a red flag and Troy to fully grab brakes. Troy was not following that closely annd it was a practice session. And even after he hits the deck there is nobody there to prevent him from getting hit for a period of time.
Is this the most egregious of eso/uci/wbd not prioritizing rider safety? Certainly not. Is it another example of a pattern of carelessness and lack of foresight. That in this case narrowly missed out on a catastrophic injury and in other cases has led to them.
How would you feel if Jackson’s season was ended in a similar crash. I don’t think you’d excuse the lack of a Marshall standing where he can flag a rider if a blind landing isn’t open.
Wow, 2.7 seconds separate the top-20 elite men after Q1!
https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/news/results-lenzerheide-uci-dh-world-cup-elite-qualifying
Sure, 3 seconds may be enough for a marshal to raise a flag. But that marshal would need to be placed between the down rider and Troy. So to follow your argument, they should have marshals stationed every 2-3 seconds down the track. That works out to maybe 100 marshal stations for this track. Realistically, when riders are only 2-3 seconds apart, as they are during training, it is not practical to expect a marshal to be able to stop riders at absolutely any position on track within 2 seconds.
The road crossing, however, is a different matter. They absolutely have someone there letting people on the road know when they can cross, and that person made a mistake. Luckily it didn't result in a rider getting injured, and hopefully they learned a valuable lesson.
Did Asa flip in Q1? With times so tight, easily could have cost him.
Junior qualifying results are in: https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/news/results-lenzerheide-world-cup-dh-junior-qualifying-0
Jackson went down just a few seconds into his Q1 run. All the pressure for Q2!
But there is only so many blind landings. in most situations on a dh course the rider has an opportunity to react. If a Marshall was there and made a mistake I suppose it happens. But there wasn’t a Marshall at all.
I don’t expect everything to be perfect. But this isn’t a local race hurting for volounteers and budget. it’s a wc race in Central Europe at a long established venue. If they can’t get Marshalls for the motorway knock down some jumps. Or you know just get the Marshalls you need.
Absolutely stoked for Dak. He sounded so down recently. Hopefully this will give him that confidence back.
edit - 23 elite men riders with a 2:51 between q1 and q2 (yes some q2 results may be redundant to q1 results). it's crazy how a track so rough, with so many opportunities for mistakes can still be so close.
and heck yeah for pinky and anna! 4 #USDH men and 2 women (melton on it!) through Q1 and luca w/ fastest time of day in q2.
The track tweaks and the current level of riding made this weeks raw a 11/10. Usually lenzerheide is one of the less interesting rounds but holy smokes it’s gonna be a great race this week.
Anyone know what happened to Richie?
I do not look forward to Bodi Burke's finals runs tomorrow. This isn't the place for reckless abandon. Love that kid's riding style though but it's gonna be scary to watch.
Track seems to favor the 🇺🇸
Without actually looking it up, I'm pretty sure this is the first time all 30 qualified riders sit within 3 seconds of each other in the elite men's category. Literally anybody could win it tomorrow! Crazy stuff.
https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/news/results-lenzerheide-uci-dh-world-cup-elite-qualifying
I've always wished Kailey Skelton would give World Cup another try, but I think she has so much fun in California that she'd hate being out of the country for months. I also don't know if Ari would be willing or able to provide the kind of support she'd need, especially over in Europe.
Bonkers.
It's already been a pretty wild and unpredictable World Cup season. If it keeps going the way it has downhill fans will talk about this season for a long time to come..... well, until next year at least, which will probably be just as fun as this year.
6 of the 10 Q2 qualifiers are winners of World Cups.
Benoit being the only 1 who hasn't won in the past 12 months.
And I'm reminded of the sheer stupidity of not awarding ANY points to racers who qualify through Q2.
If you're in the Final, you qualified. You are supposed to receive qualifying points.
It could be the last race of the season, the overall leader not qualify & 2nd in points gets through Q2 into the Finale...and still lose because of that.
@Seb Stott of Roots & Rain to the white courtesy phone.
Are you still occasionally crunching these numbers?
Watch it slowly and Troy passes the marshall who looks like he is reaching for his flag. Look farther down the track and you see Jed is still in the process of crashing and hadn’t even gone off the track completely yet. All this on a fast but fairly straightforward section of track that doesn’t see a lot of crashes over the years so probably why you don’t see a Marshall every 100 feet.
I’d feel the same way if was Jackson just like I don’t feel Hardline needs to pad every tree especially in a tech section like the one that took him out for a year
jackson's Q1 crash & Q2 run POV
slapped this reel together w/ 30 rider names in 2.8 seconds. baffling how tight it was!
I was gonna say another interesting video to make would be if Jackson's first corner wash out cost over 3 seconds so even with a 'perfect' run after that, he would still have been out. But maybe it's kinda pointless to say given he cruised it down after (or had another crash while pushing?) and was nearly last in Q1. Not sure if it's plausible to take his Q2 splits and apply them to his Q1 split 1 crash timing to mash together some kind of narrative but...
It's crazy to think that corner wash out just like that, could be the difference between 1st and 30th...
Been following WC DH for 30+ years, this is insane to me. There has always been one rider or even a group that is head and shoulders above the rest on a given weekend. This proves that qualifying for a WC is insanely hard these days. Props to the top 30, but really props to top 50 because one slip in a turn can drop you from 30 to 50.
Not sure the correct number for finals for the men and we can argue it all day, but the talent pool is deep and only getting deeper.
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