Have we discussed this?
I it does seem deeply sexist and elitest. The ongoing issue of allowing riders in to experience elite level will surely also affect the sport ongoing?

Your thoughts.

Are there more than 15 competitive female riders?

No, and if you close that door, there never will be. It’s hard enough to get into a world cup as it is.

(let’s be honest, if you want more competitive female dh, what you should do is push rachel atherton off her bike)

All sensible moves IMO.

The headline fact of less women looks unfair, but I really don’t think it’s lack of opportunities to race that’s made women’s DH a bit thin.

And it can be revised when the field gets stronger.

How many men are allowed to race?

Just STW trying to whip up a bit of click bait by going for the feminist angle. After all only 21 women raced at Mont St Anne.

Poor justification for a bad decision, reducing the womens field but not the mens?

Not entirely sure it’s an issue, the women around 15th place are generally a minute back anyway, they arnt even close to troubling for a top 10, let alone a podium, or win.

They could probably do with working on their race craft in general.

That said, I can see why they would want to be there, if I got the opportunity to race a WC I’d be well up for giving it a crack 🙂

Meh, they’ve done it wrong, they should have reduced/restricted the number of practice runs, it would have had a bigger impact.

That said, no-one will miss the bottom 25% of the womens field as their performances simply arent of a world class level.

Going by such logic, you’d be as well lopping the bottom 5 teams off the premiership,

Less people racing top level can never be a good thing imo, it’s not as if it’s every week.

Like i said, they did it wrong.

But if they are going to do it wrong, they’ve at least only cut out riders that are mincing down the hill cr@pping themselves and not really racing at all.

Dirt has a bit more of a balance view on it, seems it might work better than I thought it be

Yep, read the dirt article for a more balanced view. Less practice and more new tracks would also be good IMHO.

That said, no-one will miss the bottom 25% of the womens field as their performances simply arent of a world class level.

The women will, the sponsorship they can attract will drop and the chance of having breakthrough just got harder.

they’ve at least only cut out riders that are mincing down the hill cr@pping themselves and not really racing at all.

The top. 20 women looked a lot better than assorted national champions in the wc at Val di sole.

The real. Question is how do you make women’s dh more accessible and competitive?

fifeandy – Member

That said, no-one will miss the bottom 25% of the womens field as their performances simply arent of a world class level.

But many riders start out in the bottom 25% then rise?

Way I see it, this isn’t about the current bottom 5 riders. It’s about every other rider that dreamed of taking one of those 5 places in the future, whose dream just got a lot more fanciful. And remember, that’s 5 places, not 5 racers- over the course of a season those 5 places are filled by a lot more riders doing their local round, or a couple of rounds.

A friend of mine has been that bottom 5, but under the new rules, she’d likely never have raced a world cup, and she’d have known how unlikely it was when she and her family were working their asses off to get her to races, to improve results, to attract sponsors and scrounge up racing fees (with ****-all support from BC), to SDA and BDS and nationals wins, moving house to get closer to racing and her sports college course… I don’t know if she’s going to make the jump to the top end, that’s up to her now, but I do know that under the new rules things will be a lot harder for the next kid. And there’s plenty of bad days on the way, where if things were a little harder, maybe they’d be too hard.

So it’s not about 5 riders.

The top. 20 women looked a lot better than assorted national champions in the wc at Val di sole.

The 20th elite women had a time of 5:35 which would of been 96th in mens elite. Rachael Atherton would of finished in 70th.

There were only 9 or 10 junior women racing at the World Champs this year and 80 junior men.

The Whistler Phat Wednesday beer league races have about 200-300 competitors each event and there’s usually only a couple of girls who aren’t in open competing and that’s in a town which is bike mad.

It seems to me that progress needs to come from the local scenes, pushing on to the national circuits. If the step up the WC is still too big then we need either another feeder series or alternate courses so that the junior women can feel comfortable racing before moving on to elites.

I think pro teams can also help. How many of the elite teams have women on the team? How much support do they get? We want a more competitive field so when/if teams take on an extra lady then we should support them

whatnobeer gets my vote. Having in a past life worked on “grass roots” initiatives* to improve the representation at national or international, I say (s)he’s bang on the money. You don’t fix it by watering down the top tier, you fix it by building the steps up.

*Not cycling

@mikewsmith – There is no need to make it more accessible at the top, as there clearly isn’t the talent progressing through from the bottom.

And thats more to do with the norms of society and behaviour of the average female than anything else. You can look at participation levels in pretty much any sport and find that males vastly outnumber females. We could speculate on any number of reasons why that is, but ultimately its irrelevant.

If you want to increase the quality and depth of a WC field, you need to increase the underlying pool of riders. If you can figure out a way to get 20-50 times more females to take up mountain biking, in 5-10 years you’ll have a large quality field.

At the moment however you’ve got the situation where we can see some of the better men get a rear flat in the first few turns, roll down waving to the crowd and post a time that would give a top 10 in the women’s field. And like that, its hardly surprising that rbtv don’t want to give them time on air, and sponsors don’t want to fork out supporting a rider that no-one even knows exists.

If you want to increase the quality and depth of a WC field, you need to increase the underlying pool of riders. If you can figure out a way to get 20-50 times more females to take up mountain biking, in 5-10 years you’ll have a large quality field.

Using Whistler again, the increase in female participation in DH has increased quite a lot over the last few years. The park runs women only (and men only) training sessions in a relaxed atmosphere and they’re incredibly popular. That translates to seeing a lot more women in the park. How many of them want to race? Not many, at least straight away, as a lot of these people are joining at the very lowest level of riding (ie never done it before). Give it a few years then more of them will hopefully end up racing.

Lets face it, for a lot of people (men and women) racing is scary, especially if you’ve never done it before or aren’t sure of your ability and the standard of competition. Events like the RB Fox Hunt are great to take some of the pressure off and introduce riders to racing, as are events like Muckmedden where the focus is on having fun in a relaxed atmosphere. We’ll get there in the end, but it could be 5 or 10 years before we start seeing the results of a well thought out grass roots push.

Also something to remember for those who want to race you can’t get UCI points in the UK now…
https://dirtmountainbike.com/news/no-uci-points-at-the-2016-british-downhill-series.html
Having read the dirt article too it’s broadly in favour, moving the jnr women out to their own slot is a good thing but I still think it’s going to hurt those on the fringes and those trying to break in. As for how hard it is there was a great documentary made down here in Oz in the run up to the Stromlo WC. All the Brits and Europeans get to go home and crash with their mum and dad between races if they are going on a budget or be able to hold down a part time job etc. from this neck of the world you pack your stuff and come back home a few months later and many $$ poorer. It will be a shame is another top rider doesn’t get the chance because of this – Tracey Hannah walked away for a few years because she couldn’t afford to do it.

Just STW trying to whip up a bit of click bait by going for the feminist angle.

always reminds me never to ask a bunch of middle aged, middle class white blokes about equality

The real. Question is how do you make women’s dh more accessible and competitive?

Mike +1

It seems to me that progress needs to come from the local scenes, pushing on to the national circuits. If the step up the WC is still too big then we need either another feeder series or alternate courses so that the junior women can feel comfortable racing before moving on to elites.

I agree with that and most of the rest of your colleagues. However, I think the problem is more fundamental than that. I still see more dads with sons on the trails – than dads and daughters. If as a man you want more young, female talent in competition, you need to encourage and support the women in your life to get in a bike. It’s still seen as a somewhat male dominated sport/past time.

Ultimately I think its all about the TV. Fewer, better riders means more time for better coverage of the main event, with lower admin costs. While it seems harsh we shouldnt forget that DH is the only real TV sport for MTB, and its that viewership that keeps it running, not anything else. If freecaster hadn’t come along at the right time I suspect DH racing would have been dropped by the UCI by now.

All of you bemoaning fewer slots for elite women, have you also been pleased to see courses getting more gnarly to reflect the ability of the elite men and their bikes in recent years?

There’s an element of having your cake and eating it, eh?

My hunch is that the women’s enduro field is starting to get the kind of depth that we’d like to see in DH – and that the talent pool isn’t big enough to feed both at present.

The good news is that there are definitely more women getting on MTBs and riding to a decent standard these days, so I think things will improve in the long term.

All of you bemoaning fewer slots for elite women, have you also been pleased to see courses getting more gnarly to reflect the ability of the elite men and their bikes in recent years?

There’s an element of having your cake and eating it, eh?

Maybe introducing different lines for the women’s races would help.

Courses are a big problem the women struggle with the bigger jumps, so smaller gaps would make sense. But when the likes of Greg Minnar says he is struggling to get down the track, what chance has a woman part time rider got?

Maybe introducing different lines for the women’s races would help.

Would that be not be even more sexister?

The positive side coming out of this is that the women will be getting their own segment on redbullTV prior to the race run coverage so some dedicated media attention on them and them alone. The men will also get a similar segment.

Increased media coverage of more of the woman’s field will hopefully be more beneficial in the long run and hopefully encourage more sponsors to take on women riders in their teams offering more support and making women’s racing more sustainable and affordable (less self funding).

There is also the need for more women racers at a higher standard. As has been pointed out there is a massive skills gap between the front and back of the current field. Increased participation by younger riders will hopefully help feed into the senior ranks and raise the standard. In the long run it would be great to see a large competitive female field but we’ve a long way to go yet.

The changes initially seem harsh for the woman’s side but hopefully something positive will actually come out of it.

You will notice I have used ‘hopefully’ a lot however; willing to give these changes a chance but could be entirely wrong.

On the one hand the implementation is sexist, but then the men and women’s event’s are a gulf apart in terms of competitiveness so to some extent will always need different rules.

They could achieve the same result by saying that the finals will only be contested by those who complete seeding runs within 110% (or some percentage) of the fastest run. But then you could end up with a full men’s field, and Rachel Atherton. Not sexist, but far worse for women’s racing.

Would that be not be even more sexister?

Nah, the womenz aren’t racing the men so don’t need to be on the same course. Works for BMX, and in skiing the women don’t even your with the men

The other option is just to design the alternate lines so that it’s faster to ride the B Line well than it is to ride the A line badly. Obviously the A line ridden well needs to be the fastest. That would allow anyone who needed/wanted an easier option a good line without forcing anyone to ride anything out of their league.

They should reduce it to one woman racer only. Let Rach go down the track and if she doesn’t fall off she wins…simples.

Seriously…tbf whilst i have zero interest in the female downhill it strikes me as a terrible decision. 5 less riders will make next to no diffeence to the track. Besides, at the sharp end of the mens race the winner is not decided by the state of the course anyway, as shown by the fact that the fasted qualifier often wins

You think allowing 5. Now let’s be completely honest here. really pretty slow girls on the track throughout the 3 days of practice has no impact on the faster riders practice?
There simply aren’t enough girls good enough to race world cups. and anyone outside the top 15 really shouldn’t be there. Ideally they should be sticking to racing their respective national races until they have gained enough speed and experience to at least be capable of finishing within the same minute as the last girl on the podium.

I rode behind a girl at a national at fort william who clearly didn’t even know the technique to drop off an 18″ step. (she was trying to roll the singletrack drops before the big wallride and funnily enough crashed)… She finished the race. albeit a good few minutes slower than the fastest in her category which as there were next to no girls racing meant her result was good enough to gain her points.

I haven’t even looked at the new rules but within the old rules. If you happened to be female and have enough time and money to enter lots and lots of DH races. You’d eventually end up with enough UCI points to enter a world cup. No matter how hopeless you actually are at the sport.

I don’t know why we can’t have male only races. There are literally hundreds of women only cycling events throughout the year and I don’t see any blokes running around shouting about it being “sexist”

I don’t know why we can’t have male only races

Last time I checked the male wc dh races were all male only.

practice isn’t though

noncycler

I rode behind a girl at a national at fort william who clearly didn’t even know the technique to drop off an 18″ step. (she was trying to roll the singletrack drops before the big wallride and funnily enough crashed)… She finished the race. albeit a good few minutes slower than the fastest in her category which as there were next to no girls racing meant her result was good enough to gain her points.

I don’t know why we can’t have male only races. There are literally hundreds of women only cycling events throughout the year and I don’t see any blokes running around shouting about it being “sexist”

Most DH/Enduro races are practically male only!

Like you say there are women only events……but not races so you’re not comparing like for like. Why are there lots of these events though trying to get more women into riding? Probably because a lot of women are intimated by being tailgated/shouted at/barged past by inconsiderate male riders. I entirely agree that in order to race say Fort Bill you should have the skills, however this applies to both sexes; I’ve been stuck behind my fair share of blokes who can’t ride technical for toffee.

Perhaps at Fort Bill you could have tried to help said girl rather than moan about her. She may have had little or no support with her and a friendly nudge in the right direction may have made the difference to her day.

mikewsmith – Member

Also something to remember for those who want to race you can’t get UCI points in the UK now…

Are there not points for the champs?

chakaping – Member

All of you bemoaning fewer slots for elite women, have you also been pleased to see courses getting more gnarly to reflect the ability of the elite men and their bikes in recent years?

Yes- and it came before this change.

benpinnick – Member

Ultimately I think its all about the TV. Fewer, better riders means more time for better coverage of the main event, with lower admin costs.

Most of the womens’ race isn’t broadcast anyway.

to clarify:
she was on her race run.
I’d already spoken to her before she left the gate to explain to her I would be riding down after her but not to worry as I wouldn’t trouble her so not to worry.
I held back a good long distance, stopping many times so as not to affect her riding at all.
I asked if she was ok after her crash. she said she was. now bearing in mind no outside assistance is allowed during a race run. What do you suggest I should have done? If she’d said she wasn’t ok. Or I’d deemed her not to be fit to continue I’d have helped her. as it is. I offered her some encouragement and left her to get back on her bike by herself and not get DQ’d

I’m not moaning about the girl. or any girls for that matter. I’m moaning about the points system and how easy it is to rank up in the women’s field. the girl was just an example to explain the huge chasm of skill/ability between the riders. She had every right to be there under the rules of the sport. I hope she has improved and is still enjoying riding bikes.

Having now read the “new rules” as posted in the front page article. an article clearly written to bait your average do-gooding ultra P.C. STW forumite (who’s probably never even ridden a WC DH track and wouldn’t even follow the sport if it weren’t for the convenience of watching on Freecaster (and then Redbull.tv). into starting a “debate” on sexism.
I actually do agree whole heartedly with these improvements.

That’s it from me though I’m afraid. life’s too short for this sort of internet “discussion”

an article clearly written to bait your average do-gooding ultra P.C. STW forumite (who’s probably never even ridden a WC DH track and wouldn’t even follow the sport if it weren’t for the convenience of watching on Freecaster (and then Redbull.tv). into starting a “debate” on sexism.

Ridden 2 wc courses, raced dh for a few years and watch it cause I like it. Also whach the womens racing because I enjoy it and know 3 ladies who would not have got to race wc under these rule changes.

Also in your cool story Bro… That could describe any number of blokes.
As I said earlier the men if stw are not always the best judges of sexism.
What should have accompanied the announcement was a plan to improve access and participation.
Id probably support track options where the women and juniors can race hard against each other it’s not sexist it’s a sensible decision, the masters wc the week before val di sole used different lines.

noncycler – Member
to clarify:
she was on her race run.
I’d already spoken to her before she left the gate to explain to her I would be riding down after her but not to worry as I wouldn’t trouble her so not to worry.

Just out of interest, how did you end up riding on course during a race, behind a competitor?