2025 Race Talk

Very hard to believe they are generating some 200+ million video views outside of YouTube.  Maybe they are counting insta stories?  

Jackson’s race run povs on GoPro bike (assume these are being counted) have approximately 300,000 views combined.

Jackson’s redbull hardline run has 3.9 million.

replays for hardlines on YouTube are around 700,000.  Imagine maybe half that watch on redbull.  

Hard to believe your average wc has many more viewers especially on a pay to play service.  
Yeah something ain’t mathing quite right.  Maybe they will be polite enough to provide some justification for their numbers.

At least this year they didn’t claim to be environmentally sustainable.

Among other things being discussed here, I can even try to sharpen Occam's Razor even further and say... None of the platforms I know of that get great views spend time and effort trying to prove and promote to you that they are getting great views. (kinda like the 'nice guys never need to tell anyone that they are nice' concept)

Another thing is, I dunno what youtube formats are like in other countries, but if they were smart they'd just use youtube as their paid platform... BUT that can't happen because they actually just bought it as a gateway/sampler for their streaming service as a whole, which makes almost zero sense. Especially for some of the prices we see that service at in certain countries.

Whereas I imagine you'd have more control over the cost of paid youtube content and could decrease the variance, as well as decrease the price, and actually get more viewers/subscribers (paid ones). Part of my reason for not wanting to subscribe to Max is i DO. NOT. WANT yet another subscription service in my life. I don't want another app. I don't want to scroll through their god awful menu to find shit. These services are bloated beyond recognition.

Youtube has a basic subscription system that usually tailors the home page to your content preferences and then is also pretty good about promoting paid content options, for accounts pushing that kinda content. And nothing about that is offensive. For the most part I am ignoring that because it's just youtubers like Jordan Boostmaster. But if it were live DH racing, AS WELL AS access to the entire back catalog of live races top to bottom... That would be a convenient place to pay for all that content, while perusing all their free youtube content.

I know I'm just describing a paid version of what Red Bull already did for free ok, it hurts, but let's just pretend that didn't exist. Ignore the pain...

These guys just pulled juniors from YouTube.  Possibly because it was out performing or getting very similar numbers to elites and some exec at wbd doesn’t like to share.

Somebody is trying to justify his job, or things are not going well. PR is the first thing you do when shit hit the fan. Saying "I'm ok" is the fist thing i do after I crash. 
This PR sounds like a careful selection of numbers to try to depict a reality that does not exist. If they were really transparent and/or wanted to be trusted , they would publish their complete dataset.
I wish someone would have the time to conduct a scientific study of the evolution of World Cup viewership, since some numbers are public.

Reece just cannot catch a break.

(me opening brand new knee pads that just came in the mail) 

(me seeing Reece sustained that injury while wearing knee pads)

"Mate, can you tell us which they were!? I just want to make sure... Sorry."

The math for the view averages out to 16per viewer.  That’s a lot of short views seeing how watching the whole race weekend is hours and hours of viewing. 

Oh shit I wear leatt pads.  😮.  Oh wait I’m safe I don’t know nearly as fast as him 😂

I may not be as fast as he is but I AM fatter... Inertia/physics is my enemyyy

Same here 😂

Not a great year for Pivot riders

what are the chances that there is a pivot team in 2026?

(as well as, do they try to 'sign' their way back into UCI events by picking up a new rider, and maybe dumping 1 or 2 to pay for it?)

(tho im assuming so long as BK is onboard they have a solid chance of grabbing a wildcard slot or whatever they call it now)

(never thought id look at the MTBing off season in a similar way to looking at the hockey off season... we need a 'draft' trade talk show)

If anyone cares, Gwin has a bunch of videos of the Placid WC track on his ig story (a lot makes sense if u have skied there before).  Looks better then I expected.  

You thought Gwin was going to design a bad track? Dude runs a bike park and is one of the Goats, I'm sure it will be rad. 

My big theory, Pivot relied heavily on BK's feedback for the most recent bike development and the geo does not support going as fast as one needs to go these days. So the guy that developed the bike gets hurt and now others are trying to go fast on a bike that maybe doesn't suit their style or a younger riding style.

Mix that with a few mis steps in talent development and recruitment and all of a sudden you are in a real shitty spot. Right now I think there are more DH bike manufactures with World Cup teams or riders then their are team slots for next year. Sooooo when like 5 teams are on v10's and 3 others are on Commencal's. Not much room for a lot else. 

Meh. Remy is about where he was on Giant, not better or worse. Griffith too injured and too new to elites to judge.

Jenna isn't too different from previous years, despite the heart break of being on the bubble again and again.

BK also too injured to judge but 5th at Hardline just behind Ronan and Tuhoto is more than fine. (Oh and 4th in Tazzy, just behind Brosnan.)

It's more so a signing strategy issue, PLUS horrid injury luck. I can't suppose Remy would suddenly be a finals threat just by being on a different bike, dunno. But... Ya know their star rider is their 'team manager', a 34 year old who hasn't won a world cup. Jenna had decent success in juniors, but hasn't touched an elite podium yet (and i mean the old 5 person one, not the new one).

Remy's best elite was 10th. Griffith's best juniors was 7th. I think Pivot was structured as a cultural race team that was never designed for a system where you have to have great results to qualify. Though I still imagine they make wild cards every round, if they go that route.

But if there either wasn't anybody to sign or if they couldn't nearly compete for strategic signings financially... "It is what it is." I still want teams like Pivot to exist, giving a strong program for Remy/Ryan. But it would be cool to see BK just be a manager who races shit like Hardline, but steps back and takes a pay cut to sign a new star rider. Given he is still fast and never won one, no chance that happens. Wild cards or bust, I guess.

Or the bike is somehow unrideable. Dunno

Teams own the points now (or in Pivot’s case, point). They’ll not be in the top 15, gonna have to get in on not using drugs or whatever those criteria are 

or they could pivot to an ixs cup team and race all over europe where they have the logistics based

They can still do enduro right?  Makes sense for them to focus on crankworks, hardline, and enduro  in my view.  Maybe a couple pro dh rounds.  Should provide them plenty of coverage with the squad they have.

I thought there is a mechanism build in the new rules accounting for injured riders?

It was news to me, so maybe it will be news to others, but there are two Canadian Open DH races this year at Crankworx. The first is happening this weekend (qualifying today, race tomorrow) and it's called the 'OG Canadian Open.' It follows mostly the same path as the classic course that was raced for years. The second is the 'RockShox Canadian Open' happening next Friday on the 1199 track. 

Rain two days ago has made for some epic conditions and they tuned up the OG track a good amount. Looks all-time - 

FYI: 

Start lists for ^OG CDN OPN ^ and all other Whistler Crankworx events are available at: 

https://www.crankworx.com/results/start-lists/

https://live.rawmotion.com/cwxwhistler2025

Dane Jewett keeping up his Canadian Open DH domination. First in seeding. 

you're thinking of Jakob who's one the last 2 CDN Open's. Good result for Dane this time though.

Doh. I was thinking I should have looked that up to confirm I had the right brother. 

Different track as well. The 1199 Canadian Open race is next week.

As far as I can tell, the only Downhill event being shown live is next week's Rockshox Canadian Open DH, Aug. 15 on Red Bull TV. Anyone know if the OG CDN OPN is being broadcast?

Schedule for DH and other events for the coming week are at:

https://www.redbull.com/us-en/events/crankworx-world-tour-whistler/crankworx-how-to-watch

Just the 1199 race is being broadcast