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Sorry, I was being facetious. Never mind the boy's inability to copy & paste, what about the totally random capitalisation, the complete lack of punctuation, the grammatical horror show...I could go on!
IanMunro - MemberCourse looks good to me.
I do wonder if some of the moaners know what an xc mtb race actually is
Let me think now, do I know what an xc mtb race actually is like? Well, I started racing in 1984 - that was at Crystal Palace - that was a very short course but early days, then in Epping Forest, can't quite remember how long those laps were, but certainly longer than 5.1km - raced in the Grundigs (and did ok), raced in the NPS (and did ok, won quite a few in my category), did loads of local races in Northumberland (Thrunton eg, one long lap) raced at Newnham, when the pipeline was still part of the course (and the tin mine) before it got sanitised, raced the Welsh enduros before they were called Merida, Salisbury Plain New Year's Day challenge, D2D, BigDog, Beastway (won my category two years), Thetford.
Mmmm, yes, I am confident I know what an xc mtb race is - question is, DO YOU?
Jolly good! I did suddenly wonder if you had a good point and I may have over stepped the mark. It seemed unlikely. 😉
raced at Newnham, when the pipeline was still part of the course (and the tin mine) before it got sanitised
Bit rougher and more cut up now than in those days. Cottage run and elfordleigh woods gain a few rocks and roots every season for an easy example of this. Pipeline is just a steep hill with a 'tractor beam' tree at the bottom. Funnily enough it still gets put in the BMBS races because the spectators like it. (not the riders, well rubbish way to loose all that height!) (oh, and I see Martyn 'second home is Newnham Park' Salt is the designer of the course too)
I can't see a problem with the course itself: remember this is very much a spectator sport for the purpose of the olympics, and there are many countries that will field 'eddie the eagles' just because they have a right to send someone to compete. 5.1k is a short lap for whippet/international level, particularly with that amount of climbing, but the interesting bits will come around sooner and more times, and ultimately for all the 'lay-people' that turn up or watch on telly, it needs to look muuuuuuuch more interesting than turning up to thetford on a wet sunday does.
It would be nice to leave it there afterwards though: if it does turn out to be too mimsy for the radmeisters on here, they can stick a nice café in the car park, a flat blue route round it and call it a family mountain bike centre like Haldon Forest.
Undercover cheeky forum night 'research' ride round about feb 2012 would be well funnny too 😀
I reckon that looks more techy than most trail centres, like I say, I bet those drops are steeper than they look.
Karinofnine, although it's clearly subjective I would place money on this being a better course than a 15 year old Newnham. As said, they still use the Pipeline and the Mineshaft, and various other features, I reckon this looks tougher than either of those. You don't appear to have done any XC racing for a while, you list a lot of enduros which due to their popularity are usually on rather dull courses. To compare this to D2D is laughable. I stand by the question, do you know what an XC race is?
As for a short lap, that's how things are going frankly, Champery's World Cup XC course is less than 5k, and there are 4 times as many riders on it. More laps = more interesting for spectators, more feeds for riders and chance to swap wheels etc.
29er anyone?
whoa whoa whoa,
everyone seems to have bypassed one of the best ever STW quotes
They would need Stumpys instead of Epics
"no, whey, duude theres rocks n stuff, gonna need another 25.4mm of suspension travel, fo sho"
Course will be fine, everyone should put their efforts into trying to ensure it remains useable after the event
I personnally think the course looks pretty good compared to some of the world cup races that I have watched in the past. Yes it may be short but that will make it better for the spectator and the television viewer. Video footage will also be more varied as I imagine you will get overhead footage along with your usual ground cameras.
I'll reserve judgement until the race but it looks to be coming along nicely.
Looks like it should have plenty of tricky bits in it (as they will come round often) and plenty of overtaking to keep it interesting for the fans.
How long is a typical road crit course, I'm sure I've seen them shorter than 1 mile and you can be averaging 25mph+
There's more to making a race exciting than making it 1 lap of singletrack where no one can overtake.
I think it going to be a good course from the pics and from what one of the riders said after I asked him his thoughts
"course is equal to dalby mate! its technical and great"
Also with Mr Salt to keep an eye on things, who was behind (with many other) Dalby which was voted the best XC event this year by the RIDERS!