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I bet Redbull owns that.. Even though it may have been an Atherton idea, Redbull most likely funded it. Redbull has people on staff who's job is to work with their athletes and make whatever idea they have a reality.

now i get why greg rubs some riders the wrong way dispite being a legend and coming across as a genuine person. looks like the rumors that he often looks for his own advantage might be true?

They will- 1.Up the min UCI points to race at WC events. 2.Only allow UCi registered trade teams. 3.Stop national governing bodies getting wildcard entrants. 4.Slash number of qualifying riders. 5.Award races to the highest bidder regardless of the suitability of the venue (especially seeing as they want multi discipline venues to save money) This will be justified by saying "that WC represents the highest pinnacle of the sport, catering for the best athletes and these changes will allow us to present the best racing we have ever seen.....So shut up peasants, we own it now,so stop whinging or fuck...

if you drop it to 30 riders you cant have protected riders IMO. imagine this, your a young Aussie/Kiwi, you save up hard for 2 years to live the dream in a Ford Transit van and eating nothing but Service station food and drinking cheap Czech beer for 4 months of summer. Your bike has cracks in the bottom bracket junction, the tyres are bald, your derailleur is making some fucked up noises, but you picture that young Sam Hill, Nathan Rennie or Masters brothers and think "I can do that too" suddenly, your chance of qualifying halves, you have...

They already reduced the field from 80 to 60. I don’t see any reason to go with 30 riders for the big final. I understand that we can watch only the last 30, I’m ok with that but to have only 30 riders for race will close a window for many underdogs. And this is why this sport is so good to watch. You never know when a new and unknown rider will throw a good run that will place him inside top 10.

It would change the strategy for many riders, but the protected riders would still be safe to lay it on the line for those precious quali points. At the very least, I would like to see the top 20 riders remain protected; the top 30 qualifiers plus the protected riders would get us somewhere around 35-40 riders on race day, and that wouldn't be horrible - of course I'd love to see it stay at 60, but you do start to get into negligible points in both qualis and finals beyond those rankings, and we also see the tracks take...

discovery execs: "how can they be factory teams when it only costs $3k?!?"