Specialized Downhill Team Dynamics - Jordan and Finn Winning with Loic Absent

Can you imagine a female in that pit with those three egos...lol. No woman would want to be around that shit. 

Will be interesting to see what they do with RMJ. Seems obvious to just bring her in. I am unaware what her current situation is, if she's generally in the same pit or kinda does her own thing?

If you believe the CEO of Madison, Jordan walked out on the last year of a signed contract with Madison/Saracen to link up with Specialized. You would speculate that a bigger salary, more professional setup and Specialized lawyers saying "LOL, try us" all played a part. You can read the comments from 'Dominiclangan' in this thread on the other site. From memory this was only a year after Danny Hart announced he would be leaving Madison/Saracen while they were still a few rounds left to race which was and still is extremely unusual, reading between the lines of those two departures it seems like it was a team that people couldn't wait to get away from. 

Both Finn and Jordan were brought in as juniors, and both have been kept on the team as they develop through their early years in elite. Hopefully that is their plan with Rosa as well.

*Edit - Jordan wasn't on Spec as a junior as it turns out. Still seems like they aren't picking up older established riders, and prefer to mold younger riders, so I'm sticking with my assessment

Has the team been running Specialized tires for all the rounds and have the wins come on a certain tread pattern? 

side note: is syndicate cursed? Poor Laurie G, Kolb struggling this season will hopefully be better next year.

Main topic:
On the latest Needles Podcast Sven briefly talks about how he can see which teams are making use of the 11 sector;s per course timing information that is available to teams. He wonders if Nico is down analysing that in the pits.
What's interesting is that now Nicks and the others aren't focused on Loic, they are split more equally between the two lads and junior female.

Did anyone else notice Jordan had little to no time for Loic when celebrating in the finish area at Andora? He moved to the rest of the team very quickly for bigger, longer embraces. Yes Loic is nice when we see him, but he's a hell of a competitor too. No doubt there is a special team hierarchy and his presence (mind games) on all others exists, team mates or not. He's there to win. Also remember now that Jordan had a bitter end to Saracen with Danny. Again, a competitor.

Saying all this, there must be a reason Finn personally has decided to stay for so long, and as mentioned, Laurent and his business decided to keep him and Jordan during the struggles. They are not completely crazy for Loic, just a bit.

Her name is Rosa Marie Jensen

Shes on Next gen team...

... She is on Specialized Gravity as of 2026. If you are gonna be rude. Be right.

She moved to Specialized Gravity at the start of 2025. If you're going to be right, be right. 

I don’t think Finn winning is all that surprising, before his back injury season last year he was very consistently near the top of the podium despite not winning after MSA several years ago. Jordan is a bit more surprising, confidence is clearly up, maybe seeing Finn do it helped him too? Either way, Specialized couldn’t ask for better results after Demo 11 launch. 

On the topic of female elites, Specialized also used to have Izabela Yankova on Gen S, who was a junior world champion. I think she only did 1 elite season before injuries in ‘24 and stepping away from racing last year. Imagine they expected her to one day make it on specialized gravity.

Say Loic retires after 2028, who is more likely to take his place as Spesh's top dog - Finn or Jordan, or even someone outside the team today?

Quentin Barbe

Nico vouilloz, build a weird almost unrideable bike, speak with nobody, ride in elite men and women and junior and xcc, do the line spotter, mechanic, driver, coach and cooker jobs, win everything.

Ah and forgets how to speak in english too.

That's my bet.

Can't wait loic to be back

I think the easiest explanation here is injury and recovery. Last season Finn was racing with a messed up back and Jordan was racing on a knee they’d just reconstructed. It seems unlikely that either of them had a good ’24-‘25 off-season, so in addition to the injury, I’m sure they were also behind on setup and testing on what was, at the time, a moving target of a bike. I’d imagine the ’25-’26 off-season was really productive for them both, both in terms of training and being able to test on a production-ready bike. Neither of them went well at YongPyong, but that was also a real outlier of a race -- first race of the season, new track, new country. And when Loic crashed in Loudenvielle, it’s not like either of them were going slow: Jordan was 2nd in timed training and Finn had the fastest first sector. They ended up 3rd and 4th in finals there before anyone knew Loic was going to be out for more than a week or two.

Maybe in a few years we’ll get more of a inside story, but for now I think we’re gonna be seeing a lot of red on the podium for the rest of this season.

I don't really buy that theory.
Looking at the last few seasons, this feels more like a natural progression than Loïc not being there.

Finn Iles
2024: Already one of the fastest riders in the field. Multiple podiums and only 0.169s off the World Championship win.
2025: Injury/concussion issues meant he never found his rhythm and openly talked about it
2026: Looks more like a return to form than a breakthrough.

Jordan Williams
2023: Won an Elite World Cup in his rookie season, proving the speed was already there. Had a hard time to find his rhythm and speed in the new category. Like Finn he also openly talked about it.
2024: Season cut short by a knee injury.
2025: Returned with strong, consistent results and showed he belonged at the front again, adapting, learning, has never been "away"
2026: Looks like the natural next step rather than a sudden leap.

To me, the bigger factors are:

Finn is healthy again.
Jordan has fully recovered from his injury.
Specialized has an incredibly strong package and new bike without testing/tinkering

So I think Loïc's absence may have changed the team dynamic a bit, but I don't think it's the reason they're suddenly this good. Both had already shown race-winning speed. Finn lost a season through injury, Jordan lost momentum through injury, and both are now performing at the level they were already trending towards.
 

I think having loic in your pit is bound to slightly affect your personal confidence.  I also think if you have a healthy loic, he’s probably the most likely to have beaten Finn or Jordan in one of those races.  How many times has Finn been a step or two below loic thruout his career.

I look forward to loic’s return.  And I like both Finn’s and Jordan’s chances of finally beating him regularly if they can keep the confidence of the past bunch of races and ride their best.  

Even better! 

These are both the answer. Jordan and Finn are both really fucking good (and healthy) and now there is one less person fighting for the podium. When that person is often at the top of the podium, your odds are better when they are gone. 



Plus, off year for goldstone. 

This deserves to not be forgotten