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Time to start the Flax-pivot thread

The problem with other ways to get race experience for US juniors is there are no tracks as steep and technical as in Europe. So for a US junior it would take a ton of money and time to get to Europe and learn the steepness and the technicality where the European Jrs live there and have easy access. I know for myself, if my son had not been on a factory team as a junior, the transition to elite would have been very difficult without near the success. I think at least for the US riders who now have...

What bugs me most is how much he talks over his guests. Let your guest get out an entire sentence before jumping in and completely derailing the conversation, it's annoying af.

By that logic u23 needs to go too. XC has two groups that cover the same ages of all the DH elite. Also Needles kind of comes off a bitter old man who lost money/spot to up and coming junior when complaining about they take resources from people trying to make a living.

I haven't listened to this particular podcast yet, but Andrew neethling is a fooking idiot. He's never not putting his foot in his mouth. Like constantly stomping his own footb down his throat. I only listen to his drivel for milway and Sven. It's remarkable how out to lunch he is given his relatively illustrious DH career?

For folks at work or who can't watch for whatever reason:

This can def go into race talk or something larger so people dont miss it being a finished event thread. This would end up as the nail in the coffin for those who have defended WBDs decisions thus far. If they can read the room at all, no way they go through with that chopping block.

Question for the Boxxer people: does this look normal, or is Luca Shaw running some sort of added chamber on the top of his spring side stanchion? Picture comes from a bike check post on Luca's Canyon Sender from the other site. Looks like it could be an added volume cap for the positive air chamber, like the MRP Noken or Ratio Flux Cap we tested on Vital.

Man one of these days a women will win from starting position14-7 and the highlights post race will be fucking hilarious. “Here’s 2 seconds of the winning run!” Loved Nico’s commentary this round. Knowing the track and why things were causing issues was rad. Maples p5! What a g!! Fucking dumb we don’t have five man podiums, dude deserves a moment. Lastly loris near death scrub off the first rock drop was fucking wild. Don’t know how he kept going.

Finn Iles winning Mont-Sainte-Anne in 2022, the last racer down the hill that day. He won despite his chain coming off during the race, and yet his win was laden with so much more importance and emotional content due to the context. This video is among my favorites, partly because Eliot Jackson was the perfect narrator for the review of the day's races. (The part about Finn's race begins at 10:43, but the entire video is, I think, well worth watching.)

It seemed to be locked to 360p when it was happening as well. Not exactly a professional production.

Loooooooooool they started streaming the Junior Men's and then just pulled the plug after 2 minutes. Stream removed from the channel.

So it seems that WBD are unsatisfied with the number of fans they managed to piss off yesterday with the Q2 no show. Lets bring the numbers up today by scrapping the junior women's race coverage without a word of explanation. Edit. Blimey, UCI Whoop put a message in the chat box saying both races will be uploaded to the channel and apologies for the inconvenience. Well that's a first.

What the hey? UCI took down the Junior Women's stream. Edit: Allllllllllllllrighty they took down the Junior Men's stream too. Sweet, I've been awake for hours waiting for this.

FWIW: This year's fastest qualifying time at Val di Sole compared with 5 most recent Val di Sole men's finals winning times: Fastest qualifying time this year: 3:42.221 Prior year winning times: 2024: 3:39.004 2023: 3:34.926 2022: 3:39.774 2019: 3:37.819 2018: 3:36.778

in my defense i have had a concussion since then 😂🤣 not long after that post actually lol

Finals Stats: 13 of the Finalists were in the Vali di Sole top 30 in 2023 17 of the Finalists were in the Val di Sole top 30 in 2024 11 WC winners into Finals 9 of the top 15 are WC winners 8 of the top 10 are WC winners Top 5 are ALL WC winners 13 Countries Represented 6 French (4 WC Winners/Each w/ 2 or more wins) Bruni - 11/Vergier - 6/Daprela -2/Benoit - 2 5 British (2 WC Winners) Walker - 1/Williams - 1 4 Italians (0 Wins) 3 American (0 Wins) 3 Irish (2 WC...

Here is the list of elite riders who have raced a finals this year but missed the cut this weekend. Let me know if I missed anyone— Elite Women - Eleonora Farina Elite Men - Martin Maes - Danny Hart - Tuhoto-Ariki Pene - Luke Wayman - Finn Iles - Davide Cappello - Richie Rude - Henri Kiefer - Remi Thirion - Lachlan Stevens-Mcnab (DNF) - Laurie Greenland (DNF)

I saw Jackson's winning Q1 time was 3:42.221, which seemed longer than normal for VDS, so just for fun I looked up an old time from "back in the day." Gwin's winning time from 2011 was 3:10.356, which is WAY quicker. Over 30 seconds quicker. So it's not just my eyes, the track does traverse a lot more. Seems like that hasn't made it safe by any means, but as others have mentioned, the mega pressurized new format may have something to do with that.

hrastnik gonna nik that $100k!