All

The Thagomizer is the most dangerous part. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer

I'm all for gnarly XC trails. I see some cool steep sections but the man-made stuff is lame. It's not mountain biking to me. It's more interesting to have sections with different natural lines, part of the sport is to be creative and interpret the terrain not to be channeled into man-made features that are actually not that difficult. it's probably ridable by mot riders. I'd rather see a big line that only a few very best could ride and that might save 5 seconds every lap.. Here I'm not sure the tech differentiates the very best ( but it...

the stegasaurus fins definitely seem unnecessarily dangerous.

I realize that most rock gardens and features are man-made, but when they look like that...it just feels weird, and more-than-manufactured. The 2-lane rack garden just seems problematic as mentioned above, but also that section of wood rounds - it looks cool on camera, but has anyone ridden something like that? It just seems different for the sake of different. On another note, that video was painful to watch. I haven't watched many (if any) XC "course walk' videos, but that gave me no feel for the track. They just kept showing different angles of the few interesting-looking features on...

Very curious to hear what the riders think; all that wood is gonna be lethal if it rains and those vertical rock lane dividers look stupid-dangerous if someone crashes there...

XC race talk - crans montana track this weekend with some serious man-made tech

bizutch sometimes I wonder how you manage to eat with how full you are of yourself already also can we keep this to racing and not derail it into people showing their asses on the race course thank you very much

Beyond that in mtbing that first generation only had to compete against themselves. The second generation only really had to compete against themselves (other than Greg and peaty) and most of them only started riding and racing mtbs as teens in pretty small fields. Now you have kids who grew up riding and racing modern bikes in large fields of riders and or developed mtb communities. And it shows in the results. It’s going to continue to get way more competitive from here on out. Pretty much every pro/team manager/industry insider constantly talks about how much more competitive it is...

Meh... This is gonna go off the rails again, isn't it? Dang it. Gonna have to rip down my days since calendar:

All sports have gotten more professional, especially the non traditional "stick and ball" sports, and because of that the entire field is significantly better than it used to be. Margins are tighter and there's just more "capital from investors" looking for a return on said investment. And even if these guys were training just as hard "back then" as they do now, their training wasn't nearly as effective as the sport specific training top level athletes have access to now. A lot of this has to do with advances in sports science and performance, but also the equipment meant to...

I realize the Supercross analogy may not be the best right now. btw Happy belated Father's Day to Jett Lawrence for daddying the entire 450 field. Also Chase Sexton just did that 'once in a lifetime' last to first kinda ride. So wow my MX analogy REALLY not great this year lol. I dunno maybe it still works...

Still too nuanced. The elite field is way deeper and way more trained now. Just like almost everything else, like supercross. You don't really get to be a semi-muscular party animal who rocks up to the hut and takes first these days. And a lot of times the tracks are getting short and bike parky to create tighter racing... Although that doesn't describe VDS at all. And then of course modern bikes. Not only are they clearly better BUT they are significantly better for outlier body types. I'm still DEFINITELY not gonna say those 2 runs are comparable. And I'd...

Looking at Amaury's GoPro of his winning run (embedded below), the first thing that stands out is the pure mix of aggression and flow. The amount of speed he manages to generate in some of those sloppy, greasy turns is quite simply incredible. The second thing is the precision. Insane! Look at this frame grab, he was hauling the mail in this section and fully committed to this tiny little gap between two painted rocks. Crazy! GoPro run:

As far as I'm aware the hard chrome coating of the X01 (and XX1) chains is the driving factor for the longevity compared to GX. The problem is as far as I know X0 Transmission chain is not hard chromed. My X01 cassette did 350k vertical ascending over 4 or 5 chains. The last one lasted 2 seasons (the drivetrain was 'fucked', so I didn't care), only to come out stretched to ~0,5% after two years. I did start waxing the chain before the last one and continued on the last one, so that could have helped as well. The...

Sort of the nature of the beast, they really try to get back to racing as soon as they can because if you have a string of injuries with not much results you are sort of sent to obscurity pretty quickly and left without a ride when you contract is up.

Connor came 22nd in finals at his last race (Fort William) but hasn't raced a DH world cup since (DNF in Finale enduro but who didn't).

Forbidden probably doesn't have the budget to send 2 guys around the world to not make finals

I really don't want to give away Simon and Fluidride's secret recipe, but I'll say that he zero'd in on footwork, center of gravity, and unconscious left/right differences in technique. Most riders turn better one direction vs. the other, and that was immediately apparent to Simon after watching me ride for 25-seconds. I actually think it was helpful to not be doing drills on the trail because the cone drill isolated elements of my turning technique and really laid my bad mechanics bare, with nowhere to hide. On a real trail, I think it's possible to show off a lot...