Fort William World Cup Downhill 2024

Aight I officially gotta not play Fantasy DH. It's the same damn thing with when I play fantasy MX. Whoever I pick crashes or has a mechanical. I can't keep doing this to riders Sorry Erice and Hauser...

Elite race results: https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/news/final-results-fort-william-elite-dow….

Streaming on Max in the US was a mixed bag. Nice to see almost the entire track on footage. The audio was jacked up the entire time though. Desynchronized with the video when it worked (commentators spoiling crashes 5 seconds before they happened), and then intermittently muted, and then just gone for the final 4 or so runs. I enjoyed when Tahnee was on commentary with Gwin and what's-his-name though.

At least 2 free feeds could be found for the Elite finals. Seems just stoopid to pay for a jacked up stream.

*uck Discovery and the UCI. Bring back Freecaster!

USA racing looking good with Mega Rise Dak, Low Pro Luca, SoCal Austin, Muscly Maples, DHSE Newkirk, Transition Tilly, and of course Asa the Chosen One.

Thanks for the Fantasy league Vital. Way better than that pink one.

That’s strange, I didn’t watch it live, not getting up that early, but watching on max was phenomenal. No issue with the audio here. Best WC track coverage I’ve ever seen in 15+ years of watching WC dh. Honestly really hoping that they keep this level of track coverage up for the rest of the year, I wish that qualifying and semi’s were on yesterday but I’ll take it. Hopefully it stays free for existing max customers, one less thing to pay for…

Streaming Max app was flawless for me. On iPad and battered Xbox One. The app is fine once you find the races, the “watch from start” option while the stream is still going—which GCN+ app had, too—hasn’t let me down through five or six sessions this year (Brazil XCC and XCO, along with today’s DNB ). Red Bull was spoiler heaven, if you care to remember. I say all this to say the delivery system is great, better than Rose Colored Glasses BullTV, and there are too many links in our internet chains to blame the app. When the kids get home from school and we have seven devices streaming HD, we can’t blame YouTube for chippychoppy. So. Yeah. 
 

Motorway follow drone was dialed, flawless. Stratosphere aerial cam was good for intro graphics but ridiculous during race runs (using that to claim “full race run coverage” is a bigger loophole than Fox’s speedsuit not a skinsuit shit. ) Long lens superzoom through gondolas and steel cables that would have a rider get grass barreled, hoping to pop out the other side?—that was hilarious every time. 
 

The track is ugly and the crowd seemed sleepy but the racing was awesome and we saw a lot. Good! 
 

Wish I could’ve seen Saturday but yeah. 
 

Sickest top 5 I’ve ever seen. All interesting riders, good stories all around. 
 

Ordering a disc cover now. 

Asa winning by six seconds.  Glad the jrs are back racing same day as elite.  Great to see how they stack up to the big dogs… 

Honestly liked the aerial cam, it was a bit too blurry and far away but that distance gives such a good tv perspective of speed versus close ups.The gondola shots were hilarious. Boy did it get damn tiring to hear about the speed suit every five minutes. Shut up about the speed suit. Shut. Up. About the speed suit! *bangs tables with fists*

I had not real issues with the stream but man was it pretty boring to watch,  I ended up doing other things while it was one and just listening to commentary. 

Not sure why this year but it didn’t feel like there were many mechanicals or crashes or really even many close calls. (There were some)

I didn’t watch the semifinals or even look to see if they are available to watch.

The feed was fine on replay from flobikes in Canada but there was a commercial at the very beginning on a not so cheap feed and the rider intro graphics got old pretty quickly.

How did they miss Greg's first crash? It was during the high up drone footage. I guess they were not looking at the screen. They had his second crash and spoke about it.

Thanks for the reminder of how much I hate the UCI.

"Aerial cam" AKA drone way too high up: What you're saying is the opposite of reality. The further away a camera (or person) is from a moving object, the slower it looks. Think about when you look up at the sky and a jetliner looks like it's slowly passing overhead. It's doing 500mph! 

The super high drone is good from scenic shots to put graphics over or establish the area the track is in, but is horrible for making an exciting race action broadcast. Those shots made me laugh as it looked like an tiny ant rider smoothly & easily flowing along a ribbon of grey. When we all know that they're smashing into rock after rock and riding like legends. 

Only if I VPN, which I can't do on the work computer (stuck at work overnight tonight) as government agencies have very strict rules around browser extentions etc.
Yeah I run into geo blocked content on Youtube all the time.

Trying to tell someone what they're seeing in reality is not reality based on your own opinion is hilarious. A plane looks slow in the sky because there is no background reference. It's gonna look fast as hell being filmed from the top over ground level because there are references for your brain to make sense of. I definitely don't want the whole race filmed like that, but in a open section it's a good speed reference (again in my opinion). Always remember your opinion is not a fact, friend

I'm speaking facts. I work in the imaging world and it's basic knowledge. Objects farther away, when viewed with a wide angle lens (like in the case of the shot we're talking about) appear to be moving slower. Regardless of the background. An airplane has clouds around it often (background) yet it's moving across the sky slowly from our vantage point, vs. if it was 250ft away from us. 

This is because an object very far away is only moving across a small distance of the image frame (or eyesight) in a given amount of time. Think of a NASCAR/F1 race--the shots that appear fastest are stationary cameras RIGHT along side the track/fence where the car rips by and crosses the entire image frame in half a second. Vs. the shot of the venue from the blimp overhead where the cars are going around the track really fast but appear much 'slower' than in the close up shot.

My statement isn't about opinion it's know to anyone who shoots video/film for a living: Being closer to action makes action appear faster.

All that said, I'm glad you like the aerial shot and you are 100% entitled to your opinion that you get a great sense of their speed from the super high shot. 

Well this is completely f'd. All Frameworks bikes stolen.

That is such a bummer, I really hope they can get backups. Frameworks is by far the coolest thing that has happened in mountain biking in a long time and I dont want it to lose any momentum. 

They were stolen in UK between Birmingham and London. The homepage says “Scotland”.

So bummed to hear this, they took the whole van but it was found from AirTag and an iPad that was on board. They got some stuff back that wasn’t taken.

The factory rides + custom gear are probably not going to be easy to sell so there's a chance these could still be recovered.

As for the S-works stuff, however, these are probably in Eastern Europe by now.

Neko seems to have very good support from pretty much everyone involved (deservingly), I doubt anyone will let this slow them down. 
 

Pretty shitty though.

I'm betting the bikes and wheels get dumped at a waste station or I assume UK thieves are like any other and will toss them in a ditch/thief pile of junk when they determine they can't off load the bikes.  

Sure, they seem like found money, but even to a bike thief they're not a useful commodity.