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Nino is in the same category as Greg Minnaar for me -- taking victories across what otherwise might be considered entirely separate generations or eras of racing. Gonna be hard for anyone to ever match that kind of longevity. A well-earned retirement.

UCI world rankings are based on a yearly rolling total. So each month sees points added and taken away as they expire. The WC rankings I believe begin with the first race and end at the last.

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...

Legendary song, many of us probably discovered it in the Post Office segment of "Strength in Numbers" 🤟

Regarding " And we are losing people perfectly capable of winning the race on race day from participating..." this one is interesting to me. If they are perfectly capable of winning on race day, then they are surely capable of qualifying for one of the 30 spots. A few other people have expressed the same opinion "but we are losing some of the fast guys now..." which seems to imply that the new qualifying format is somehow putting some of the fast guys at a disadvantage? I think there's definitely a generational shift going on, and many of the riders...

Losing Vital Raw hits hard, ngl, its just a big part of the DH weekend.

Good question. Slight tangent, but I’ve been toying with the idea of launching a monthly podcast where I unpack stuff like this. I didn’t think people would care, but when you break it down in a way that maps to our world, it actually seems to land. And honestly, it’s way easier for me to riff on this in audio form than hammer it out on a keyboard. Anyway, I read through the last few pages of comments, good to see Revel back from the dead, by the way. I’ll probably share more thoughts on that later (maybe). For now...

It was mentioned by me on Moving the needle Podcast. Despite what others think or have written here there are most definitely visa issues or VISA Waiver issues for nearly every non EU based rider. This includes riders from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. You are only allowed to be in the Schengen region 90 days out of every 180 days. Switzerland and Poland are both Schengen states and although Andorra isn't you still need a a Schengen Visa or Etias to enter as you can only enter from a Schengen state. (If you are travelling without...

I want to congratulate Vital and Lawlor on the best content to come out of round 1. I hope to see this continute with a rotating cast of riders at every round. By following the riders over the course of a weekend the story lines come to the front and you see the drama play out from the riders point of view. 👏🏼

Appears to be some sort of belted purse.

Thanks for the scrolling format. I love the nerdery, but always give up on having to swipe through.

please keep this format for all photo articles and ditch the slideshow ones, thx

Gwin is currently still ranked in the top 50 which I believe gets him automatic status, but I think he easily meets the wildcard criteria of "personal status" and accounting for injuries in previous seasons too. The guy is a 5 time overall winner and in the top 3 race wins of all time, so I'm OK with them making an exception for that! WBD gets a lot of hate for their decisions but I feel like this is one of the better ones....

I wasn’t going to post this, but you’ve provoked me. Ben Horowitz wrote a book years ago called The Hard Thing About Hard Things. In it, he talks about his time as a CEO in the early 2000s, and how brutal the job can be. One thing that sticks out is how often people walk into a C-suite role with a prebuilt narrative in their heads. They assume there will be a well-rounded team, a healthy bank account, a working business, and a highly defensible product. That version of the story almost never plays out unless you’re stepping into a...

haha you are right and I am sorry, I didn't mean to derail the thread so much. All I really wanted to do was defend Enduro as I agree with a lot that has been said above, it's mainly a perception issue, so I am trying to shift perception and bring some positivity into the discipline. That was the reason for the Jack/Sram comment and trying to make it less about Sram pulling Enduro funding, and also the Chris Ball comment, which did not go over well, but that one I'll accept and I will keep trying with him. I'll...