Edited Date/Time:

I had never really thought much about this topic until our Inside Line podcast with Kathy Sessler, Team Manager for the Santa Cruz Syndicate, which launched a few days ago. She and I discussed the 2018 World Cup DH and her feelings on the finals being reduced to the Top 60 qualified Elite Men's riders instead of the Top 80 that we're used to. She elaborated on team manager meetings with the UCI and a variety of options that were presented to make race day run more efficiently. One of those ideas was moving Juniors to Saturday so the Elite Men and Women had more time on Sunday. That idea did not hold up to a vote with most team managers against it. Kathy went on further to share that she doesn't feel Junior development programs / categories at the World Cup level do much good. She believes that the kids either have "it" or they don't and trying to foster elite-level talent in DH through a Jr. development process involving World Cup competition doesn't yield success.
Listen to a portion of the discussion from our podcast
I dug into last year's qualifying results to see how many of groms would have qualified for Elite race day if they were all allowed to race the same class. I didn't bother comparing finals results b/c it's all about making the show, right?
- Lourdes - 3:09.4 to qualify = Top 5 Junior qualifiers would have qualified in Elite Men
- Fort William - 5:16.4 to qualify = Top 10 Juniors
- Leogang - 3:26.5 to qualify = Top 3 Juniors
- Andorra - 4:31.6 to qualify = Top 4 Juniors
- Lenzerheide - 3:18.5 to qualify = Top 7 Juniors
- Mont Sainte Anne - 4:27.1 to qualify = Top 7 Juniors
- Val di Sole - 4:02.5 to qualify = Top 9 Juniors
Does Kathy's argument hold water? At Fort William, 10 young rippers would have made the Elite show, 9 at Val di Sole. For the last couple years, we've always discussed where 1st-place groms would have finished in Elites. Why shouldn't the racing age just be 15 or 16+ for Elite World Cup DH competition instead of having a full class that takes up time and space on an already-cramped race weekend?
Remember, this is about World Cup DH race weekends only, not being against general Junior racer development, XC events or even World Champs categories.
Photo at the top by Dan Hearn