I was just wondering, will it be left as it is, completely demolished, or all the ‘technical’ sections taken out?

They are going to send a 4 year old girl round on a bike, every time she falls off they will remove that section. After that they will open up the gates and everybody can go pootling round on their new apolos

It’s going to be open for public use, but I imagine it will be changed to a Blue grade trail…

imagine this with the rocks removed

Hopefully with everything intact but with maybe a couple of extra chicken runs.

But in the end of the day it’s in Essex so not very likely I will ever go there.

according to my mum it will be opened to the public but parts will be made safer as they would kill a non olympian

she saw it all on breakfast tv

if tv makes stuff look easier/flatter, then not only are there some bits that are really very tricky, but also some very steep (therefore short) descents.

this looks great on telly, but short descents aren’t necessarily the best way to make a ‘fun’ course.

a bit of re-working here and there to take the edge off it might not be a bad thing…

I thought they were going to put some more jumps and gnarr stuff in so it would be up to the technical standards of STW’s elite trail centre riders 😀

I hope whoever is tasked with “Fixing” it has a look round at some of the other trails in the UK (Scottish & Welsh mainly) to see what the MTB public is actually capable of.

The World Cup XC at Canberra is tough but still intact. Rather than make it all a fixed loop it is multiple section that can be linked at a number of grades. Much better idea than a fixed loop for small trails. Leave the meaty stuff, mark it up with warnings and put some chicken runs in.

Theres bound to be a SITS style event on it, then it’ll just go back to being a hill in Essex..

it will be open after some work – whether it’s dumbing down the course or just contructed barriers to stop people straying onto the harder parts is yet to be decided.

glad to see everyone on here thought it was easy those olympic riders really are a bunch of wooses when they say its one of the hardest trickiest courses theyve ever ridden… What do they know not like theyre the best in the world or anything…

picture taken by footflaps yesterday…. from the some pics of womens mtb thread

I find it strange that the MTB trail needs to be sanitised as it doesn’t look that technical or difficult to me but then I am clearly one of the STW weekend riding gods but +1 for getting rid of the climbs though :-).Especially when compared to the Fort William DH course where you can just rock up and throw yourself down it.

glad to see everyone on here thought it was easy[b]looked like there were some decent bits in it[/b] those olympic riders really are a bunch of wooses when they say its one of the hardest trickiest XC courses theyve ever ridden… What do they know not like theyre the best XC Racers in the world or anything…

The general tone is that to remove sections would be a shame, yes it might be easier to ride it on a 6″ skill compensator or whatever people want to degrade the average rider too, but thats what people will turn up with. Not that many out there on Carbon 29er HT’s super skinny tyres and seat posts nearly in orbit with no way to change them. It’s either a race track or make something more out of it and use it as a race track.

As above you can go ride most of the World Cup course at Ft William (most but not all). I rode the XC up there and in Oz and most of the WC DH track.

Lets make out own decisions about what we can or can’t ride. Sign it right and it will be fine. If you hurt yourself then thats Darwin.

I can see Sheldon in that pic ^

Meh. 29er’s, 100mm travel and a seat jammed up your arse… sounds like perfect STW bandwagon territory.

I can see Sheldon in that pic ^

That’s why I posted it! STWers spying on STWers photographing young girls….

From the slowish speeds they went through the rock garden, the rock garden was very hard to ride, so I can see the organisers taking quite a few rocks out for the public:

Annie Last, Olympic Women’s Mountain Bike Race by brf, on Flickr

If the course is closed it would be a criminal waste of money (£800k +?)and a kick in the teeth to the tax paying MTBing public and would also make all the “Legacy” talk of the Olympics a complete nonsense.Imagine if that money had been made avaiable for a trail centre? Provide decent sports facilities and people will take part which is surely what the crucial point of this whole Olympic thing is about -greater participation.

One of the parts left in the Canberra XC for us rubbish members of the public to decide if we can ride it or not. (B line available)

mikewsmith

Now that looks a bit more challeging 🙂
Although STW ers would just launch and drop it …one handed 😉

Some details of the plans here.

Just because some of the best riders in the world make it look easy does not mean it would be for the likes of me. Would think twice about the jump to the boulder that Sheldon is on. Painful if you get it wrong….

“It’s very important to make sure its safe for everybody to ride,” he said.

“But we have to maintain a challenge for the really good riders and we haven’t lost that elite level facility.

“You’ll have to make a conscious decision to take the more technical lines.”

From BBC Article looks like all technical bits remain (probably) though statement 1 is a bit worrying.

And the favourite question – What tyres would everyone recommend? 🙄

If you can’t get Mrs Toast’s link to work (just goes to a blank page for me), I guess this (and the newsletter link on it) has the same info. Still not very clear as to exactly what modifications to the course are going to happen though.

http://www.essexlegacy.org/olympic-venues/hadleigh-farm/hadleigh-farm-after-2012/

slainte ❓ rob

Sounds promising but let’s wait and see.
BTW were there any refreshment facilities on site for the Olympic event(food stalls and beer tents etc)? Were you allowed to take in your own?

I don’t get all the complaints about it. It looks more challenging than any trail centre I’ve been to. It probably needs sanitised (a few alternative routes at the very least) for the vast majority of the general public to ride it.

butcher

Ever been here? [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfYRoRVA148[/video]

Imagine if that money had been made avaiable for a trail centre?

I would rather see the money spent on bridleways han trail centres .Improving them and on upgrading some footpaths to bridleway status.

Re to the laggan black route.
Yes I have been there and IMHO it’s dead easy. There is absolutely nowt technical. Some big rock garden but they are point an shoot. At no moment whatsoever I had to think about my line.
From what I can see the XC olympics looks a lot more techy.
Lot of people here seems to think rocky = techy…

Ever been here?

I haven’t. Couldn’t be bothered to watch all of it either, but most of the rock gardens looked pretty flat in comparison. Not to mention that’s the black route, and so I assume there are also red and blue alternatives for…well let’s be honest, most people? 😉

It looks more challenging than any trail centre I’ve been to.

From what I can see the XC olympics looks a lot more techy.

And so it should be ,it’s for an Olympic title!
Trail centres are designed to flow ,to be ridden by the general public ,and be fun,with a few technical and/or rocky challenges thrown in at various difficulty levels,hence the easy point and shoot,well at least for you juan 🙂 So it would be good to leave this as it is with added chicken runs for the more recreational rider as well as the Olympic line,if only for the STW naysayers to make complete fools of themselves on(I include myself in that group!) though I would probably never venture that far south as there are pleny of far more challenging ,technical and rocky descents on many of the mountains in Scotland.Leave it for the Surrey hills mob on their 6 inch skill compensators.

If you look at the course, the bits that should be “taken out” are actually the easy chicken line stuff. Take the “gap jump” in the pics above, for example, on the far left are a couple of rows of small rocks, which lets be honest, you could easily just roll over. So, remove those, and make a very easy, “family route” option (ie. no obsticle) and leave the gap jump in for those of us who have (or think we have) a higher skill level. That way people can still ride the course and truthfully say “i’ve ridden the olympic mtb course”, but they can choose to do all the hard stuff as they see fit. Also, that way, the general atmosphere and layout of the course is unchanged imo.

It’s also a bit disingenuous to say “only olympic standard athletes could possibly get around safely”. Sure, when you’re racing, your heart rate is through the roof, you’re on a super lightweight, steep geo carbon hardtail, and you’re desperate not to loose a single second, then yes, to hold all that together for 6+ laps without making a mistake and crashing DOES require an olympian level of skill. But, for the general public to ride one slow lap, maybe get off for a look at the hazards before riding them, and almost certainly on bikes which have much much more capability, well, it doesn’t seem to far fetched to leave the technical parts as they are?

That video doesn’t really do Laggan justice, you just can’t really tell how steep the sections are. To be honest I thought the Olympic MTB course looked easier than the Laggan Black.

More importantly, there is a huge difference between riding a technical bit and racing the same section in an XC race with riders right in front and right behind you.