I still believe enduro can be great to watch and follow if packaged correctly, but the highlights and related media has gone backwards in recent years. Interest in the sport seems to be dipping considerably.
I think most have accepted that it isn't suitable for live broadcast, so instead we need a fit for purpose live feed with easy to follow timing and someone at the bottom of each stage getting comments from riders throughout the day. Followed by a highlights show that tells the story of the venue, race, personalities etc. rather than trying to replicate what has worked for DH.
Avoid clashes with DH to maximise the audience and encourage rider crossover.
Get it back to varied and interesting venues with race formats to suit each venue (mix of 1 and 2 day races).
Bring back the fantasy league.
Get course preview out earlier in the week. Create more content so people actually know there's a race coming.
The bigger Q I have on Enduro was always that yes, it represents what most of us do better than DH but so few of us ride competitively beyond a bit of mates racing mid-ride so is the race focus relevant enough to justify the costs, or is it just that so much of the bike industry is lost if it can't turn every aspect of riding bikes into a race?
I can watch a 2 min youtube clip and know a top rider can go crazy fast and loose on your bike, job done. That's the EWS's competition and it's cheaper, more creative, faster-reacting and shows a brand's creativity more easily. It doesn't ask for me to follow a series, it's just there if you want it and it grabs your attention. You could say there's a lot of that stuff fighting for your attention but it's where the riders and film makers have earning power I think, I tend to watch clips based on who's in them for their riding style (nothing to do with taking speed down to the millisecond) or how they're filmed.
do wonder in the case of GT if pon have decided they only want one brand doing enduro and that will be canondale
GT are pulling out of DH too I believe
Before my time, but seems like you’re saying it was only good because the more famous DH athletes were there, and they weren’t really trying anyway.
It was a bit of a mess if the truth is told. Some events were great, they'd basically make a 60-second DH track wide enough for 4 riders. Others were flat dull afterthoughts to the DH weekend.
It should have had massive potential.
- mid travel but slack bikes (i.e. what morphed into Enduro)
- a format that actually worked for TV
- ready made competitors / rivalry
- broader range of competitors, mostly DH riders, but there were a handful of BMX guys, and the all-rounders like Brian Lopez
What killed it:
- Rubbish tracks
- Creeping professionalism. This was in the dark ages between the early glory years of DH and the current era so there wasn't the same money riding on it. Riders would come out of what was seen as the drunken afterparty mates race with broken limbs and miss the rest of the DH season. These days that'd lose you a contract.
GT are pulling out of DH too I believe
Say what now ? Where've you heard that ?
Its interesting to watch this and other similar opinion all over the MTB media, podcasts, insta feeds etc.
I've been a MTB rider and sometime amateur racer my whole life, and followed it closely - right from checking the results and reports in Dirt Mag when I was a teenager, through to paying up for Discovery+ this year so I can keep up my interest in the new 'world series'.
I've personally raced DH, Enduro, and XC at points in my life. I love watching XC these days - its brilliant. DH - obviously, love it. I've enjoyed this year despite the end of the Red Bull era being touted to be a disaster (it wast, its been different, but fine).
I've never, ever got into watching, or following, Enduro. I dont really know who the riders are or who wins. Or where they race. I've never really watched it and its never really 'got' me interested like DH or XC has. In fact the most interest I've paid tends to be when someone I know from DH has a go at Enduro.
https://www.pinkbike.com/news/race-day-photo-epic-chatel-enduro-world-cup-2023.html
Needs more and more of this.... it looks AWESOME.... but... well, coverage isn't often there.
“A ‘lightweight’ class in DH might work well to develop and market good bikes for most of us”
Enduro race bikes are a similar weight to DH bikes - it basically comes down to coil vs air suspension as the lighter forks are cancelled out by the heavier cassette and dropper post.
@weeksy a friend of a friend rides for them. He's without a ride for next year and I got the impression it's because they're pulling the team rather than him not being re-signed
I've watched a couple of EWS highlight programs this year and it's just not as engaging as Downhill or XC. Watching a stream of riders ridding the same section at what is perceptively the same speed just doesn't do it. I've seen some local Enduro races and found it exciting to watch in person. Downhill is great to watch on screen either live or as a highlights package. XC is better live, watching the whole race.
@weeksy a friend of a friend rides for them. He’s without a ride for next year and I got the impression it’s because they’re pulling the team rather than him not being re-signed
I thought it was fairly common knowledge they were going to be one of the casualties & pulling the pin. Not surprising, as they have a lot of riders, which is a lot of money on logistics alone, before you even consider salaries & expenses.
Coupled with no-one ever buying their bikes, makes it very hard to justify any kind of ROI.
There is going to be a lot of riders fighting for contracts next year. Pretty sure it’s not just down to the mishandling of the EWS this year, more of a symptom of the bike industry as a whole being the basket case it always has.
Start of the year I bumped into Greg Callaghan in Innerleithen, asked when the enduro kicked off, he informed me that they had already done two that year!!
The ESO have turned EDR and DH to shit in under a year, changes that wern't needed and a recipe that worked, they just had to tweak it.
For someone who would sit and watch the DH quali's and finals to not bothering at all this year, down to the shocking coverage and the muppets they had behind the mic's. Have Gwin and Myriam at the last round was a welcome change and actually watched a bit, needed a mute button for Cedric and RC.
Red Bull Rally manage to cover a lot of the cars in their end of day snippets, albeit not as long as it used to be. The eurosport coverage of the Dakar is pretty meh, redbull is shorter and goes way further. The likes of Fox do an amazing job with their dialled series.
There are a few people that have made a few quid out of all this and left everything in a pretty shit state. Time for a much needed riders union and for the riders to have more input. Could see Redbull launching a rival series, which would atttract a lot of people.
I think there is a parallel here with motorsport.
World Rally and Touring Cars are amazing as a sport - but has always struggled for TV appeal and therefore coverage. In many ways it is a sport that should appeal to manufacturers as a brilliant way of marketing cars that look like production versions. But the format of multiple 'rounds' or stages is difficult to put on camera well...
Yet F1, with all it's flaws and foibles, dominates the TV exposure of motorsport. It is the 'one hit' race, the exciting finale, the bash and crash etc etc that wins out. And so it has the money. And the money means exposure, which means more money....
mountain biking is more fun to do than to watch.
FTFY. IMHO. I've never got into watching mountain bike racing. There was some XC on TV the other week whilst I was flicking through the channels. God it was dull... Red Bull Hardline I think was the last DH type riding I watched on TV and that was kinda bearable given the bloody huge features and the seemingly good coverage of the track as well as the more compact format of it. General DH and Enduro though (didn't even Enduro was televised), theres only so many times you can watch a person on a bike go past a few cameras littering a race track. I have a similar opinion about F1 though as well - must be bloody ace to take part in but watching it is just cars going around a track with a few overtakes.
Coupled with no-one ever buying their bikes
Shouldn't laugh, but someone had to say it.
Really hope they'll still be supporting Wyn, the MVP of MTB.
Or maybe he should be going on to bigger things with his media work anyway.
World Rally and Touring Cars are amazing as a sport – but has always struggled for TV appeal and therefore coverage. In many ways it is a sport that should appeal to manufacturers as a brilliant way of marketing cars that look like production versions. But the format of multiple ’rounds’ or stages is difficult to put on camera well…
Yet F1, with all it’s flaws and foibles, dominates the TV exposure of motorsport. It is the ‘one hit’ race, the exciting finale, the bash and crash etc etc that wins out. And so it has the money. And the money means exposure, which means more money….
FTFY. IMHO. I’ve never got into watching mountain bike racing. There was some XC on TV the other week whilst I was flicking through the channels. God it was dull… Red Bull Hardline I think was the last DH type riding I watched on TV and that was kinda bearable given the bloody huge features and the seemingly good coverage of the track as well as the more compact format of it. General DH and Enduro though (didn’t even Enduro was televised), theres only so many times you can watch a person on a bike go past a few cameras littering a race track. I have a similar opinion about F1 though as well – must be bloody ace to take part in but watching it is just cars going around a track with a few overtakes.
I think this is why XC still does well despite being uncool.
You can sit down infront of the stream and it immediately make sense. There the brit from Team Ineos, there's MVP and WVA, there's Absalon, Schurter, etc, you can see who's in the lead, pick someone to cheer for and it's all over in an hour or so.
Contrast to DH where where to a casual observer it's just one person every 3 minutes picking their way round the muddy corner that happened to be within terradek range of the commentary box to got a camera to whilst the commentary screams that 'something' must have happened in the woods off-camera as he's missing a wheel/tyre/arm and that's his race over.
Even my OH get's into the XC, whereas when the DH comes on I get a handful of difficult to answer questions about who's doing well (because the fast guys haven't gone yet) and a comment about how she'd be more into cycling if there was a chairlift and a cafe like that.
Why would GT have just released both a new DH and a new Enduro bike? Weird.
World Rally was huge in the 70's through to the 90's Colin MacRae era. Loads of mainstream TV coverage, big crowds lining stages etc.
Back then it was long distance multi day events with stages over a wide area, then cost cutting kicked in and shrank the overall distances and turned it into multiple short sprints to make it more TV friendly. And that nearly killed it off.
Sounds familiar?
Just to add, I think GT's sponsorship of some good athletes - and of Wyn TV above all - have done a great job of making the brand seem more relevant.
And their bikes have gone from ugly and pointless, to more visually acceptable and on-trend in geometry.
But they still don't seem to be getting much market penetration (in the UK at least).
From the previous page
If GT are the bike of choice for many privateers (DH per pinkbike)
Obviously the online presence doesn't reflect reality, but a bit of well placed advertising had the desired effect.
Privateers (as in, anyone not on a team) at WC level seem to mainly be on Commencals and Santa Cruzes - based purely on me watching the races.
Perhaps our man in the UK/regional pits Weeksy can tell us more about what the average UK amateur is spending their hard earned on.
From our experience the same can be said in France @ayjaydoubleyou
The only time I saw a GT was when they had factory team members entered in the races.
Yep GT have definitely not been known as the privateers bike of choice. They have been known as a bike even their own riders didn't like, and the new one is rumoured to be very snappy (I've only seen one failure but it was high profile and spectacular!).
Apart from the DH bike I've not seen a GT in the flesh for years. I wouldn't even know where to buy one in the UK.
I was at the IXS Cup in Verbier last Friday.
Don't recall seeing any GTs.
Loads and loads of Commencals, quite a few SCs and Treks.
You can sit down infront of the stream and it immediately make sense. There the brit from Team Ineos, there’s MVP and WVA, there’s Absalon, Schurter, etc, you can see who’s in the lead, pick someone to cheer for and it’s all over in an hour or so.
So do we 'need' mass-start DH event of some kind? Should Enduro move to a set of group starts for each stage?
Edit: 😉
Even my OH get’s into the XC, whereas when the DH comes on I get a handful of difficult to answer questions about who’s doing well
But then my OH (who can't even ride a bike) loves DH becasue of the speed and the "just on the right-side of out of control" that the top riders have, she loves the Frenchies, has missed Amuary all year, and worries about Goldstone and Iles (fellow Canucks) crashing. It's about the the only sport she'll sit and watch, and even came with me to listen to Greg do his speaking tour a couple of years ago.
Pretty sure it’s not just down to the mishandling of the EWS this year, more of a symptom of the bike industry as a whole being the basket case it always has.
To be fair to the bike industry they were supporting racing pretty consistently until covid came along, orders and supply were all over the place and then the economy stalled. Canning teams and letting staff go due to covid era spending decisions effecting budgets now is a shame but it's always easy to see theses errors in hindsight.
jameso
Full MemberThe bigger Q I have on Enduro was always that yes, it represents what most of us do better than DH but so few of us ride competitively beyond a bit of mates racing mid-ride so is the race focus relevant enough to justify the costs, or is it just that so much of the bike industry is lost if it can’t turn every aspect of riding bikes into a race?
TBH it's the other way round, the industry was incredibly slow to pick up on enduro, especially the US parts of it. I mean, so were we, the French had it absolutely nailed long before we "invented" it 😉 But the industry's tried very hard to catch up/get in front of it, and I think that's had almost the same effect sometimes.
My Mrs will watch DH & XC but not the Enduro Highlights - as "it's boring and doesn't show anything".
I have to say I agree with her, no one above the top 3-4 riders get any coverage in the limited, woefully short highlights show.
My 12yo Daughter is dabbling with racing this year, she's done an XC race, has her first DH on Sunday - she asked me what 'Enduro' was. I explained it as a race where you ride between timed 'mini DH' stages. Her reply was "Why not just race DH and use an uplift......."
I also noticed from Facebook that one of the beginner/mini Enduro series cancelled an upcoming race due to lack of entrants, where as our local Winter DH series (with no uplift) has over 100 entrants to the first race.
It's a pity that Enduro seems to be on the decline as I think it's a great race format - pedal around the woods/mountains with your mates and race down some timed stages.
Would be nice if the likes of BC supported a proper national series, especially with there being and Enduro Worlds Champs race next year.
the industry was incredibly slow to pick up on enduro
They were. But slow or not, what I mean is, maybe World level Pro racing just isn't as relevant to this type of riding, the EWS itself prob isn't having much impact on bike sales in this area. The boost to sales wasn't there relative to the brand's investment? I'm speculating though, not saying this from a view of data. I suspect if you were doing OK in DH already then EWS probably didn't add much to the brand profile or sales?
“I also noticed from Facebook that one of the beginner/mini Enduro series cancelled an upcoming race due to lack of entrants, where as our local Winter DH series (with no uplift) has over 100 entrants to the first race.”
I think the mini enduro that recently got cancelled, was a mid-week daytime race. Everyone’s backs at work/school, so was always going to be a tough sell.
GT are pulling out of DH too I believe
which makes sense as pon have Santa Cruz as their dh brand and SC don’t do an enduro team despite making very popular enduro bikes.
Heads up for the "I didn't know it was on" crowd
It's interesting that Chris Ball has been absolutely anonymous since his disastrous AMA session on Pinkbike earlier in the year. The Vital MTB forum is rife with some wild rumours about enduro and DH next season. It's quite some feat to do so much damage in a year to two well established race formats
Could see Redbull launching a rival series
If I screw my eyes up really tight and promise to be good, will this happen? Please?
On the subject of GT.
In DH they are clearly the big brand that have a team that riders end up on when other stuff goes wrong and then want to get off ASAP. The one (admittedly a few years back) that sticks out is Bulldog who was clearly being held back by that bike as it rattled and gasped its way down the hill. He was out of there like a shot at the first opportunity.
Maes is (was?) to GT what Rude is to Yeti - except Rude is still at the absolute peak. Neither of them are so-called personalities, so their appeal will solely be based on the USP of having a bike ridden to EWS (WTF is it called now) glory by X. They haven't got the media reach like YT have (and Canyon still get) via Moimoi or Pivot get with Ed Masters and BK.
GT have done good stuff with Wyn though, but if you look at his stuff he isn't giving it a sell to be riding on GT. He barely mentions it, which I don't think is coincidence.
Anyway - ESO / Warner Bros / Discovery - get in the sea.
If I screw my eyes up really tight and promise to be good, will this happen? Please?
Well it might, but it would still only be a sideshow to the World Cup series.
What we really need to hope for is Discovery / ESO to learn from their many mistakes and make some big improvements and media personnel changes for next year.
Some post-race pit talk featuring Dean Lucas and Josh Carlson (both of whom I'd quite happily watch more of in future coverage):
So, no ride for Josh at Giant next year.. cagey with it but could be interpreted as no Giant team in EDS next year either? #speculation
Anyway – ESO / Warner Bros / Discovery – get in the sea.
They have nothing to do with running EDR though do they?. It's run by Chris Ball through Enduro Sports Organisation Ltd.
I caught the 'premiere' of the EDR Highlights last night on YouTube as it streamed 'live', a day and a half after the racing had finished. There were around 800 live viewers as I was watching. It's no wonder teams are dropping like flies.
I also listed to a Downtime podcast with Chris Ball from Feb 23 yesterday, before the season started obviously. The contrast between the opportunity talked up by Chris Ball and the delivery is striking.
Anyway – ESO / Warner Bros / Discovery – get in the sea.
They have nothing to do with running EDR though do they?. It’s run by Chris Ball through Enduro Sports Organisation Ltd.
ESO = Enduro Sports Organisation. Warner (or discovery, cant remember which) now own some (or maybe all) of ESO I believe. They certainly handed them a wedge of cash back in 2021 I assume in return for equity.
Ah right, that makes sense 🤦♂️ Yeah, they've not covered themselves in glory. I think some things in DH/XC have gone OK, and recently they've got into the stride a bit better (junior race cancellations aside), but Enduro just seems like it's being treated like the ginger step-kid.
Could see Redbull launching a rival series
I can't. They've never supported enduro, so why would they now? Unless they did some sort of invite only one-off event. More importantly for the sake of enduro; currently* the only glass ceiling for WCEDRWS is a minimum of UCI points and not a two tone helmet.
*And hopefully for the foreseeable future
