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there is the outside possibility of gamesmanship by running off course in qualifying and therefore getting a 'clean' run in before the other top-20 guys and before the track got too blown out....
[b]Expert gamesmanship [/b] 😆
He just threw away the overall points lead there BTW
yeah that wasn't planned!
brilliant weekend of racing. The course looked fantastic and the camera work was really good. Way better than the likes of Fort William. I thought the commentary was a bit flat though. I get the sense Warner has been hauled in a bit by Red Bull and Claudio was surprisingly dull. Apart from that it was fantastic viewing and Gwin was on another level.
Crikey, that Greg Williamson crash was something...
And that's two races in a row now where Trek riders have snapped a chain in their race runs. Think someone should be having a wee word with their mechanic.
thought the commentary was flat because Gwinn had destroyed everyone before they even got on the air by that much time then wasn't that much of a competition for the win afterwards.
Liked Claudio's input on the choices of lines riders were making as well and how that would affect their times etc.
spawnofyorkshire - Member
thought the commentary was flat because Gwinn had destroyed everyone before they even got on the air by that much time then wasn't that much of a competition for the win afterwards.
Particularly the way he destroyed them - by the time they came over that big rock, it was clear as day they were all four or five seconds behind so the rest of their run didn't really matter. so many top riders hobbled with injury didn't hel;p matters either - Smith, Bryceland, Atherton, Hill, Minnaar all at reduced capacity.
Still, credit to Gwin, he blew everyone away, can't argue with that.
I thought Claudio was good, he came up with some useful insights and his chilled out personality made a nice foil for Warner.
They were both a bit lost when the timings failed on the last two runs.
sure ive seen an interview with Warner where he mentions he's been told to tone it down a bit for Red Bull. Also that 'what is a DH bike' bit at the beginning was a bit cringey... but as said, Gwin spoiled it early on!
Claudio was maybe duller but way more insightful than Warner (and not afraid to correct him, which is useful- "I don't think she lost much time there" "She lost loads of time there") Warner did seem a bit lost for a lot of the time
And yeah, how were they so lost without the splits? Gwin went over the big rock somewhere around 2:05, you could tell as soon as it went to that camera how far down a rider was. When the first time's set so early it's not hard to keep track of splits etc surely?
Having a best time set early shouldn't ruin it, certainly didn't for me, having an unassailed record/run just makes it more obviously impressive... but it felt a bit like the commentators wanted it to be about "who's going to beat it" which made it a bit anticlimatic every time people came up short, rather than "holy ****balls that's fast"
Apart from missing the not top twenty qualies I thought the coverage was excellent. They did show Gwins run aswell, no one was going to beat his time, injured or not.
The thing missing in them showing Gwinn's run was sector 2 where he pulled out the unassailable lead. Some riders were up there in his times for the first and third sectors, but that middle bit did the damage. Taking 5 seconds out of everyone in a minute long sector is insanely impressive. Sucks he wasn't wearing a go-pro for it either so we'll never know.
Shouldn't, but it can do.Having a best time set early shouldn't ruin it
Gwinn's early run in the dry at Fort Bill did the same thing, took something truly spectacular from Hart to get anywhere near it after the rain and he was still 2 secs short
I'd love to hear how/where Mike Jones ****ed up.. he was clearly well pissed at his run when he crossed the line.
hope it's mentioned in the next "On the hunt" vid
Seriously does nobody actually look properly at the times!?
As i said earlier there is no elusive sector 2 FFS....
If you do the math and look at the actual sector times rather than just the split times you'll see that Fairclough is only 1.5sec back from Gwin in Sector 2 as was Hart and Bryceland not this 5 second crap (That is cumulative).
Seems just that Gwin was able to follow it through all 3 sectors consistently. Nothing odd about it.
Have you forgotten where you're posting, Si?
Haha... Oh yeah good point!!
Seeing that crash video made me look up the rules regarding leaving the track and from here
[url= http://www.bss.rs/documents/uci/MTB_Commissaires.PDF ]Practical guide for commissaires in mountain bike events[/url]
I get this:-
[i]"9.5. Disqualification
A rider leaving the course is not automatically disqualified. He normally must re-enter the race course at the point where
he left it.
But often riders exit the course at a place where there is a steep descent that makes it almost impossible to re-enter the
course exactly where it was exited; or re-entry is complicated on account of large numbers of spectators; or it is dangerous
for both the rider and other competitors, or even the public, that he re-enters at the same spot. In such instances,
common sense must be used, in the spirit rather than in the letter of the rules, i.e. the athlete must try to re-enter the
course as close as possible to the place where he exited, but above all, there must be no advantage gained by having
exited the course."[/i]
Gwinn should never have been disqualified according to that. Even if he gained an advantage (unlikely), "the athlete" didn't exit the course, only his bike did.
G
Si - Member
does nobody actually look properly at the times!?
As usual the "truth" is somewhere in the middle ground as my analysis of the Top10 riders shows:
If you properly look at the splits, you'll find that, yes Gwin was quick on both Intermediate 2 and 3, but that he was signficantly faster than anyone else in Intermediate 2:
[URL= http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q137/max_torque_2006/gen%20junk/2015_Lourdes_split_analysis_zpsi8mgn8he.jp g" target="_blank">
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q137/max_torque_2006/gen%20junk/2015_Lourdes_split_analysis_zpsi8mgn8he.jp g"/> [/IMG][/URL]
You'll see that Gwin lost 0.32% of his winning time in Intermediate 1, then gained 4.99% in Intermedate 2, and finally gained another 2.28% in Intermediate 3
Compared to the "average" time of the other Top ten riders (if you can call the Top 10 DH's in the world "average"!) he took a massive 5.7% advantage away from just Intermediate 2!
But, look at the deltas graph and you see he gets consistently quicker all the way down (the mean slope of the graph is negative (in fact, 1.47% per Intermediate section). However, his standout section IS Intermediate 2
Only Hart also managed to continue to get significantly faster all the way down the course, and Fairclough the opposite, got significantly slower.
Riders like Byrceland & Brosnan just maintained their speed the whole way down
So as i said, he WAS significantly quicker than anyone in Intermediate 2, but he also did well (but not by such a margin) in Intermediate 3, after a good, but not perfect Intermediate 1.
😉
I thought the commentary was a bit flat though. I get the sense Warner has been hauled in a bit by Red Bull and Claudio was surprisingly dull.
^This.
Not wanting to take anything away from what was an [i]amazing[/i] race with some stunning riding, I was left a little disappointed by the commentary. I thought those two would work a lot better together than they did.
Cracking race to start the season though and as much as I struggle to warm to Gwinn, I can't help but be truly amazed by how well he rode. Superb talent 😯
One thing I've not yet been able to work out about the UCI live timing - are the intermediate positions based on the best overall time to that point or on that of the leader at that point? As MaxTorque shows above, they aren't necessarily the same thing.
Speeder. is that the current DQ ruling or the strange temporary amendment from a couple of years back that allowed Rachael Atherton not to be DQd at Windham?
If that's current and Gwin still managed a qualifying time of 15th or above after that crash he should actually be the current Series leader
is that the current DQ ruling or the strange temporary amendment from a couple of years back that allowed Rachael Atherton not to be DQd at Windham?
There's no obvious date on that that I could see though there was an 07 in something iirc so it may well be out of date. At lunch I had a quick look through the rules I could find on the UCI site and didn't come up with anything else. You'd have to ask an actual commissar (sp?) about the current ruling's exact wording.
If you look at the footage, Gwin actually completed the full course, all be it on foot! As you say, his bike went AWOL, but he jumped/slid/walked WITHIN the course tapes back down to it!
Only if there is a rule that says the full course must be completed "on" your bike should he have been DQ'd!
(and judging by all the sans-bike flying/crashing going on at Lourdes, quite a few riders would also fall fowl of that rule too 😉
UCI rules doccumentation is a shitefest.
Just hope at the end of the year (wherever they place) it's a bigger gap than 10 points between Gwin and Bruni in the overall.
I'm still miffed at the decision from Windham in 2012 (Rach A)
As far as I'm aware the times you're shown on screen and whether the rider is up or down is based on the time of whoever is sat in the hot seat at the time.
If Bruni for example is 2 seconds down at the first check and Hart is in the hot seat then Bruni is 2 seconds down on Hart's time, nobody else's that weekend.
If Bruni makes up those seconds and takes the hot seat then the following rider's time checks (be they up or down) are based on Bruni's new fastest time.....and so on....if the next rider is Gwinn and he smashes it then all times are relative to the time he just set in his race run.
[i]4.1.035 If a rider exits the course for any reason, he/she must return to the course at the same point from which he/she exited. If the president of the commissaires panel deems that the rider gained advantage, the rider is disqualified (DSQ).[/i]
It a shockingly badly written rule, but there you go.
As I understand it at Windham 2012 Rach took a couple of feet off the course, but the panel deemed she'd gained no advantage hence the win. I dunno if Gwin was deemed to have gained an advantage in his quali run, but TBH if he'd have pushed back up, he probably would've still started form where he did on Sunday anyway.
I guess by definition a "rider" has to be on a bike. The gaining advantage thing is much less clear.
My interpretation would be that it refers to cutting the course Enduro style rather than crashing off course and getting back on. No-one ever (probably) gained an advantage by crashing.
Rachel's was an interesting one as she probably didn't go faster (gain advantage) because of her off.
I really can't see how they could DSQ Gwinn for that - it does't fit the spirit of the rules at all and the letter is quetionable.
Rachael's wee out the tapes excursion at Windham was the first time they'd ever ruled a rider could continue without re-entering the course at the same point they left.
There were many many DQs each year previously for EXACTLY what she did.
They've now reverted back to that rule.
Rachael took the lead in the overall points that day by 30pts and went on to win by only 140 pts. The strange decision not to DQ her gave her 250pts of those.
[i]They've now reverted back to that rule.[/i]
As in most things I tend towards cock up rather than conspiracy.
Who knows what really went on with that decision. :shrug:
really hope wee Emmiline takes the overall this year tho.
Any one of the top 5 women would deserve it TBH, competition in the event is as close as the men
Nah.. but fair enough, that's your opinion