How crap does the new Olympic mountain bike course looks.

tp://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/essexs-olympic-mountain-bike-course-takes-shape-28273

Bloody eejits, spending £800,000 for 3 weeks use and they still haven’t agreed on if it can be used after the games. What a waste of money and make mountain biking look like joke having a course like that. Take out the couple of rock drops that have chicken runs and it looks like a family friendly sunday afternoon track. Mountain biking isn’t just about who is the fittest like road riding it is about skill, courses should be technically bloody hard.

£800,000 could have built us a wicked new mountain biking venue in the south. Its not like we are overflowing with them.

Idiots!!

Rant over

Again?! Is it retard week on the forum?

It’s not done yet, the velodrome looks a bit shit at the moment, as does the athletics track, but the Games is still over 18 months away!

Edit: more/better photos on BM.

The Olympic mountain biking is clearly a total balls up. British Cycling has (as ever) failed off road riding by not standing up for itself and demanding proper facilities, either a new one in the South or an existing one in the North which happened to win a prize for being great at world cups.

It’s going to make a mockery of mountain biking in the UK and can only damage the image of the sport.

5.1 km long? F*ck me, that’s not even worth getting your bike out for!

Oh, it’s a joke – right?

…rigid singlespeeds for that course then!

We should do our own course.

Maybe you should actually READ the article :roll::

And before you say that the course won’t offer a technical challenge to the riders, don’t be so sure. Some of the work that has been completed includes several rocky drops that should pose demanding for the racers. There’s another rock drop that is still to be completed that looks like it should raise a few eyebrows when it’s finished. We can’t help feeling that this should be a fun course to race on.

And that’s the crux of it; we came away thinking how much fun the course looks like to ride (let alone race). That’s not something we were expecting to come away feeling earlier that morning on our train journey to Essex. Maybe, just maybe, the organisers have developed a course that will not only provide great spectacle come 2012 but also deliver up a challenging test for the riders.

Read more: http://www.bikemagic.com/event-features/london-olympics-2012-mtb-course-preview/9103.html#ixzz13kmUnMcu

Ermm, the grandstands are temporary – nothing has been decided yet on the course after the event.
Does it matter if the course is short? Distance will be made up of laps.

I don’t think it looks too bad considering it isn’t even finished yet

How many times round 5.1km to make a decent length race?

Boring.

What a joke.

Looks like most of the previous Olympic XC courses. Give em a break its only XC its not supposed to be like coedy, natural trails or Freeride droppy stuff!!!

I was pretty pissed off when I saw the first few pics. Starting to like the look of it a bit more now tho.

As one of many riders in essex, it will be really great if they leave all the technical stuff open to the public afterwards.

Anyway, isn’t it a longer course and with more elevation than Beijing was?

Turn that bridge into a double or even a table top make a couple of the drops actually drops instead of rocky slow roll offs stick a bit of northshore up there with some passing points and parallel seesaws put some big berms on the DH corners and it would be fun tittle track and would certanly be a chalange to the XC boys and their lightweight bikes. They would need Stumpys instead of Epics now that would really be ‘a “new concept” for [XC] mountain biking’.

Perhaps they should change the format to a 15 mile loop, all riders should wear overloaded camelbaks and they could stop for a breather after every climb, ideally all riders should be at least 2 stone overweight and armour is optional.

That would keep a lot on here happy.

Should have built the course in a naturally hilly wooded area, would have made it more interesting for the riders and saved a few quid

Should have built the course in a naturally hilly wooded area, would have made it more interesting for the riders and saved a few quid

…at the expense of the 20,000 spectators per day they are expecting, all the TV crews, commentators, etc

Course looks good to me.
I do wonder if some of the moaners know what an xc mtb race actually is 🙂

Perhaps they should change the format to a 15 mile loop, all riders should wear overloaded camelbaks and they could stop for a breather after every climb, ideally all riders should be at least 2 stone overweight and armour is optional.

That would keep a lot on here happy.

+1, it would need to take all day too.

I do wonder if some of the moaners know what an xc mtb race actually is

+1

How many times round 5.1km to make a decent length race?

Boring.

**Slow clap** You certainly conform to with Ian’s comment!

either a new one in the South or an existing one in the North which happened to win a prize for being great at world cups.

It’s the London Olympics, it’s not the UK Olympics, it never has been. I’m going to add that to the clipboard, as so few people seem capable of understanding it!

I think it’ll be good, Afan wouldn’t be, at all, neither would any trail centre, fun to ride and fun (or even plausible) to race are very different. Swinley wouldn’t have worked. Dalby is several hundred miles too far away. There are more technical features there than most trail centres. The course isn’t finished.

UCI regulations for XC Races

“4.2.012 The course for a cross-country race should include a variety of terrain such as road sections, forest
tracks, fields, and earth or gravel paths, and include significant amounts of climbing and descending.
Paved or tarred/asphalt roads should not exceed 15% of the total course.”

“4.2.013 The course must be wholly ridable even in difficult weather conditions. Parallel sections must be provided
on sections of the course likely to deteriorate easily.”

Ive already said it looks like a large Crazy Golf course
and that the rock gardens (piss my pants) looks like stone cladding
and i would not be suprised to see the berms made in peble dash!.
And all built next to a fake castle FANTASTIC 🙄
All you need to put Essex an the map!

It’s not finished yet!

I’ll try and simplify it for you, you seem to be struggling. Here is the London Velodrome:

Do you think all the track riders are whinging that it doesn’t look up to much on all the forums? No, because they can read and have brains!

And all built next to a fake castle

No, it’s all built next to a REAL castle! Hadleigh Castle

😆

I’ll state again that i think it looks very promising

for a half built course it looks good. The bikemagic pictures give a decent impression of it. Just hope it remains as a permanent site so I can have a go afterwards.
I like the way that the course is shaped to give specators a decent view as well. Might actually be watchable on TV as well, as opposed to the usual imcomprehensible glimpses of riders diving in and out of a wooded section.

They’re apparently going to do a test event next year, so come along to that if you want to be sure of having had a go! Knowing how most features look less technical in photos I reckon those rocky drops could be a lot steeper than they seem!

I with Grantway – it has the look of a Crazy Golf course. I’m sure it will end up having some challenging sections and the openness will be great for TV coverage but it’s never going to be in any danger of looking natural.

What the hell have they surfaced the trail with as well? It looks a completely different colour and texture to the underlying soil – like they’ve surfaced the whole thing with fine gravel and sand.

Same stuff they used at Dalby at a guess, makes it all weather and that.

At risk of being hounded out of here with my first ever post, I think it looks alright!

BURN THE HEATHEN!

Joking, welcome, and I agree.

Of course it looks unnatural. They gave just built it, they didn’t just find it. It has to be built with half a mind given to the possibility of heavy rain in the days of the events and ensure it’s ridable. It’s an Olympic XC race course primarily, not an all day trail centre

I just wish people would try and support this a bit more rather than just dismissing it in the basis of a few photos taken early in the course’s life which will not be that representative of it once it’s ridden and weathered in

+1

London 2012 Olympic Mountain Bike Course Preview

I think there are a lot of people posting who haven’t got a clue about XC racing.Course looks promising so far and think it will be pretty good by the time they are finished

I think there are a lot of people posting who haven’t got a clue about XC racing

deffo.

LOL The History of the Castle The owner built it out
of old parts of other deralict Castles So Fake Castle has it
was built for a dwelling and never intended for defense use.
Go to the Castle all info on the plaque

So Piedi Fake Fake Fake Fake

njeee what the Furrrrrrrrrrrrk the Vendrome is in East London
I know that i live two miles from the place But the XC
Ruhbarb & Custard track Ha Ha is in Essex around 30 miles from
East London 🙄

Castles were pretty much always built as a residences. In what way exactly is it fake then? If you take parts from one bike and put them on a different frame, does that make it a fake bike?

You’re just here to troll aren’t you

Houns – Member
http://www.singletrackworld.com/2010/10/london-2012-olympic-mountain-bike-course-preview/

Hell yes, I can’t wait to give that a ride. 😀 My opinion on the course has completely changed over the last couple of days.

There are some technical rock step-ups, some technical rock slab descents (real ‘full fork travel’ jobs too) and some crowd pleasing features like an over/under tunnel/bridge combo. While it currently looks like an orange scar, that’ll soon wear in to look a lot more natural come August 2012.

What the fffuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkkk you on about
if i taken parts off one bike and put them onto another i would call that a bike?

A Real Castle is a defence Hadleigh Castle was not intended
has a defence or built to deffend in any shape or form it was simply a dwelling its not that hard is it.

Are you a moron? May I ask what a vendrome is?