Hey, so just fair warning, this is a rant / screed / diatribe / manifesto. If you aren't ready to read the words of a person who feels perhaps irrationally angry about something that you don't think is that important, now is your chance to dip out.
.....
Okay still with me?
Whister DH world cup was probably the sickest bike event I have ever been to.
One of the highlights was watching Lachie lay down an absolute HEATER, putting him 4.8 seconds up in the hot seat - and it was GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL... but you know what FUCKING SUCKED?
Seeing him be fully disqualified for going inches on the wrong side of fucking course marker.
DSQ - ARE YOU JOKING??? The penalty for being 2 inches outside a marker is DISQUALIFICATION?!?!?!?!
THIS IS INSANE. What are we even doing here WB/UCI???
These athletes are risking their goddamn lives every single time they drop in on a downhill track. 1199 was carnage. Watching practice runs, I learned how loud an airbag was because people were getting bodied left and right. We want to see athletes swinging off that thang in the gnarliest conditions, but then tell them THEY GET NOTHING because they were inches outside of a single course marker pole?
Here are some organized thoughts
- THIS RULE IS OBVIOUSLY IDIOTIC when you think about applying it to other racing sports. Receiving a DSQ for going outside of a single pole on accident is unfairly punitive. If you go off the track in F1, and gain an advantage, you are encourage to give the place back because you know you are likely to receive a penalty. You know what penalties look like in F1? They are frequently required to give the place back or in some penalties be idle in the pits for 10 seconds. They aren't fucking DSQ'd because THAT WOULD BE INSANE.
- These athletes are literally risking their health in every run to do something amazing and a DSQ is dramatically punitive and bad for sport of downhill. It is bad for sponsors, bad for athletes, and bad for competition. Who is going to truly push as hard as they think they can if they know that being an inch on the wrong side will result in a DSQ.
- The WB/UCI proposed remedy to cutting a course marker is equally idiotic. You want a rider to stop -> get off their bike -> hike a bike up the muckfest of 1199 -> re enter the course and drop in all so they can finish in last place? This makes no sense. This claimed remedy is simply receiving a DSQ by another name.
- There is a simple, easily implementable fix that would be equitable to all riders. This is my solution: If a rider cuts a pole, they will have 5 seconds added to their time. Maybe 10 seconds... I don't know, but the point is we have remedies other than disqualification that would reward spectacular performances that have one minor mistake.
- Some people will say "but the current rules fair to all the riders", but being being fair and being totally fucking stupid are not mutually exclusive.
- Some people will say "but the course markers are stand ins for tape". Except that course markers are NOT TAPE, so why are we applying the same rules to 2 foot tall poles as we would a fully taped off run? IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.
Anyway that's my rant. I seriously think this rule is total horseshit, and honestly it's unnecessarily cruel to people who pour their lives into this sport. It's just a poor way to treat the competitors. I encourage anyone who agrees with me to bitch about this until the UCI/WB changes it.
I’m not considering your opinion until you call it “DQ.”
UCI calls it a DSQ.
I’m getting ratio'd already… damn am I out of touch?
Do people like this automatic disqualification for missing a pole by an inch?
Yes, them's the rules. Everyone knows it when they line up at the starting hut.
No protected riders
No mercy on leaving the track
Welcome to DH.
If you are only going to get a 10 second penalty for leaving the track than what is to stop a rider at the Whistler track from straightlining down the grass and skipping the last wooded section?
And comparing to F1 or SMX is not apples to apples. Those are lapped events were it can be sorted out easily by giving a place back not a race against the clock
I actually think that "x" second penalties based on the severity of leaving the course would be a good thing. It seems wrong to disqualify someone given all the hard work and money spent to be there, but make the time penalty count for something. For example Lachie's mistake, given that it was quite minor, could be a 5sec penalty. He gained nothing by going outside.
It would be a ten second penalty per course marking pole missed.
Enough penalty to discourage course cutting, not not so severe to disqualify a rider for accidentally feeble grinding a pole.
I respect your opinion about being ruthless here but the thing is that the poles are causing an issue that we didn’t have with tape.
In the days of course tape, how many riders were getting DQ’d for going off track? It feels like riders are getting DQ’d at every round this year, and I think that is a problem that needs to be addressed.
I'm with you mate. 10 Seconds missed per pole missed.
It is kinda bogus that you get disqualified and get no points. Especially in the case of something like Lachie who had no idea he missed a pole, or when asa crashed real hard this year and probably had no idea which pole he missed and needed to hike back up to and got 0 points. Those 31 points he would have got for last place would be pretty huge rn. This happened to Finn toon
I think if you finish the course you should at least get 30th place points. If multiple people miss poles give them all 30th place.
5 seconds might not be enough penalty but if you make it through qualies and cross the line in your race run you should get some points for the overall
Ride inside the poles. They are the same for everyone. If there is one that is in an utterly stupid place, hopefully it gets realised early on in practise and gets moved.
Its like a berm. Do you ride the main line through the braking bumps or do you try riding on the smooth top 2.4 inches and risk going over the top?
Frankly I'm more impressed that the commisaires were actually watching the runs in such detail that they were able to pick this up within a few minutes.
I'm more interersted in justice for Kiefer. Dropped from 6th (transponder time) to 23rd (when he actually walked to the line)
To me it doesn’t look like a rule issue, it looks like a course marking issue that commissaires could have rectified before race runs.
I think that Comm course walks need to take athlete rep to get a feel for what will happen in Mach chicken race runs - both from a safety perspective and a more general ‘is that unnecessarily restrictive of what a rider might do when riding the bull?’ Perspective.
The rule is ok, plenty of sports have the same type of rule. How it’s deployed on any given course (weather is relevant too) is what needs thinking on.
Strong disagree.
If you go to a system where it is a time penalty for missing a pole, but then DSQ (as listed on the results sheet, sorry) if you intentionally skip a pole, then we are introducing a judgement call. And I think you have to include the DSQ for intentionally skipping poles, or else you get a situation where riders are making a calculation for going off track in certain sections.
I mean, Richie Rude got DSQ'ed in 2021 on a taped course, so to say it's never happened before is wrong.
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/richie-rude-disqualified-from-ews-tweed-valley.html
Edit: Yes I know this was a pole/tape issue and a really odd one. So it's not the greatest example.
More over than that, I think we all underestimate just how well these riders know their lines. I got to do a "time training" day with a former DH racer as my coach and was blown away with how he could see a race line by hiking down a 45 second rut track marked with cones once and then nail that line lap after lap. We've had a few years of poles now, and I think it's only become an issue recently due to just how much more competitive the entire field is and everyone looking for an advantage. If we had tape we might have less DSQ, but all be sitting around waiting for course marshals to repair tape all the time.
And while we're sharing hot takes. I much prefer poles over course tape. The idea of stringing a shit ton of single use plastic in the woods and tying them to trees always rubbed me the wrong way.
lol have Christo encase the the whole mountain in Saran Wrap and it’d have a hundredth the impact of one team flying to N America. WBD can’t sell the greatest race series the world has ever seen (save for Mario Kart, of course) but they somehow got you guys thinking about the environmental damage of race tape…we humans are so weird!
You are high if you think Lachie didn’t know he went outside the pole. How would you not? This wasn’t a blind race. He saw the poles all weekend. You also saw his reaction live when they told him. He didn’t protest. Was it international? No. But thems the breaks.
Also not sure what poles vs tape has to do with it. Sure the poles could be ambiguous like we saw earlier in the year. But that wasn’t the case here.
I like Lachie. I want him to have his 2nd place result. Part of racing is being in control enough to stay inside the course.
Lachie's left knee barely grazes the pole as he goes around it on the right side. The left side is "in" and the right side is "out." We're not talking a couple inches. We're talking a foot outside the course.
MX and F1 penalties are subjective and inconsistent, whether it's the AMA or race director making decisions. I'd much rather have objective rules that are harsh to avoid DH becoming a political clown* show every race where results are litigated for weeks and teams with more money have more resources to figure out how to exploit the system.
*more of a clown show than the UCI's already made it
I don't watch MX but other racing more or less has to be judgement calls because there are valid reasons one could go off track, mostly stemming from other racers (got pushed out, avoiding a wreck, etc.)
Short of the track getting red flagged requiring a re-run, DH doesn't have that.
I think Lachie got absolutely ripped off for a full DQ, i think new rules could follow something like each pole is a second penalty (since that's what most races come down to), but more importantly shit needs to be reviewed and looked at to see if any advantage was actually gained.
I like it when the racers stay on the racecourse.
Lachie’s run was phenomenal.
Still, it didn’t fit within the confines of the event which 30 other riders agreed to.
Inside the poles=good, outside the poles=bad
It’s dead easy for everyone to understand, there’s no interpretation or nuance required and it’s the way it’s always been. If you can’t stay in the course, slow down till you can
Freecaster days. I probably have this on DVD. Remember that race, I think it was in France, Steve Peat "cut the course" at the top? The grassy bit.
He was DQ'd. Wasn't he? I'm not sure. Will have to dig out DVD. Or can check out RootsNRain.
I don't remember it being such a ruckus about it as this. Steve didn't complain. Well he probably did, but still. And in the vid clip at what was probably the team dinner after, Minnaaar and Steve kinda laughed at it. "Steve cheated!" "I cheated!" And they laughed. Ahhhh...those were the days
There's no contest Lachie was out of bounds. I do agree that if you go out of bounds you should still get basic points for making it to the final.
Listening to the B Practice podcast last week with Dak and Shroeder, Dak made it sound like his DSQ at worlds was because his front wheel hit the course marker (inbounds) cause it to flex and whip back and forth... when his back tire finally came up to the marker, the marker had flung the wrong way causing his back tire to now be OUT of bounds. THAT is one of those situations that I think is absolutely bogus.
I'll happily die on the hill that the current rule sucks, and has always sucked. A time penalty, that's based on per-incident circumstances, has always made more sense to me. Let the rider continue pushing on their run, and let the governing body of the race do their job and dish out penalties at their discretion.
Nothing looks more ridiculous than a rider pushing up the hill in a downhill race to enter the course where they exited. #endpolegate
Well that’s gonna end well.
UCI- we’ve given rider x a 6.7 sec penalty
Rider- no way was that 6.7sec, it was only 0.5
Another rider who gets bumped up- more like 15
My point being how do you allocate a time to each individual case.
Maybe if you make the final you’re guaranteed 30th or 15th spot points, and if you or more than one get the current DQ then they just finish joint 30/15. Or, you know, just stay in the poles
agreed. I am never a fan of subjective rulings. I think the 10s per pole would work nicely. Its punitive but not absurd. 10 seconds would have placed Lachie in ~18th. Still gets some points for a great run but penalizes the mistake.
I agree that a flat 10 second penalty is the safest bet and easiest thing to administer. You could go down the road of a 5 second for minor and 10 second for major, but that complicates things and adds a layer of subjective to the whole thing. The easier thing to do is 10 seconds for something minor where it's an obvious accidents and that leaves disqualification as the heavy hammer for intentional or egregious course cutting.
The safest best and easiest thing to do is stay on the marked course
Haha, I suppose you're right, the easiest thing is to play the game without breaking the rules.
This isn't a hill I'm going to die on, but one argument against a time penalty or DQ'ed riders getting points is that having to push back up to enter where you left makes it somewhat self-policing - If a rider knows they went off track and they want points then they have to push back up (I agree this part is lame). I think it does help the optics on the rider when they do miss a pole - if they blow past it people assume they didn't realize it, which is probably the case given the incentives, instead of assuming that the rider went off line and hoped no one would catch them.
With that said, I don't know that there's a perfect system. With the current set of rules we had the issue with Amaury cutting between the A & B line in poland (?) last year (?) in qualies (?) which IMO was way less consequential to his time than lachie having to grab a metric shit load of brake to make it inside the pole (or turn push back up after he missed it).
Post a reply to: Evan's Op-ed corner: UCI WB poles, DSQs, and justice for Lachie