[Closed] Difference between professional roadies and MTBers

I know which are having the most fun and it ain't the roadies...

Could be any number of factors: general education; media training; the riders trying to empathise with/ sound like their audience/fans; peer pressure.

☕🍰

I suspect there's a lot of media-driven image involved here.  There's no good  reason for anything other than a wide range of educational standards/ IQ in both aspects of the sport.

Perhaps you need to have the IQ of a small stone to do the mentalist stuff the Pro MTB riders do? It's bloody terrifying.

It's all about attitude to risk.

Anyone who's prepared to throw themselves down a mountain at extreme speed risking life changing injuries or death is also unlikely to give a rat's ass about perhaps being perceived as less than  polished in a subsequent media interview.

Odd thing to notice.

What about footballers and rugby players? Ever noticed a difference there?

Or golfers and boxers?

Different sports attract different types shocker.

The whole extreme sport field has it’s own vernacular and I suppose to the uninitiated it sounds dumbed down but then again it’s not supposed to appeal to the masses. If you listen to a lot of the German road pros they are as thick as pig shite. It’s quite the stereotype here that stupid people become road pros.

Probably a bit of media training on both sides - tuned to target audience.

Gravity MTB disciplines and their audience resonate more like action/extreme sports, hence the crossover into MX etc etc, whereas road cycling is a bit more like track & field, and has a different audience.

yeah but.....

not all roadies are dull and media trained... (well probably is but has fun with it)

Wow, this is one of the stupidest posts I've seen on here for a while.

Ever heard the phrase "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing"?

I'm not sure DH only attracts the thickos, Manon Carpenter is back in Uni now she's 'retired' from World Cups and I'm sure there are others, there was a pretty decent Student DH scene a few years ago.

I think a lot of it comes down to the audience and how the sport is 'sold'. MTBing is still largely only watched by other mountain bikers, to earn a living from it you don't have to be the best, just popular (you still need to be very good), 'we' like the mavericks, the loons and the adventure seekers, the 'RedBull effect' doesn't help - it's a brand sold on Extreme Sport nutters.

I don't really follow Road Riding, but when I've seen bits of 'Le Tour' on TV the riders seem almost joyless, but there's so much more money involved because it's more of a mainstream sport that you end up with the robotic PR machines, just like F1 - it's better to say almost nothing interesting than risk upsetting part of your audience.

Ironically (because they're are the driving force behind Hardline)  The Atherton's are probably the most robotic DHers you'll see, they're pushing for the mainstream and they're probably the most media savvy team, they were doing the whole funny web-series thing long before anyone else, back when Gee and Rach had personalities.

It's worth watching the World Cup series, a good race is a great way to spend a few hours in front of the box and it's a bit more 'normal' than Hardline - Hardline is a bit like Rampage, an end of the season blow-out for riders who don't mind risking a lot for a little, it's not really representative of the DH race circuit.

Shall I throw in the hand grenade of class divide when comparing such sports as football and rugby..... Go on then!

Wow, this is one of the stupidest posts I’ve seen on here for a while.

Precisely why?

Everyone else who answered before you managed to see what I was asking/saying and responded accordingly. If there is nothing to it, then say so and say why.

EDIT: Your stealth edit doesn't really make your first comment much clearer.

rugby union or league

Roadies have had the last four hours on the bike to contemplate what they are going to say.

MTBers are still so full of adrenaline after their run.

"I just kept on turning the pedals. It was a hard climb"

Compare that to the average downhill race or free ride event.

Try and succinctly sum up a run of your last trail where you finished at the bottom buzzing with adrenaline without using any clichés or specific MTB jargon.

Surely it’s just down to there being massively more money involved in road cycling, which means the teams/sponsors push for more professionalism in interviews, etc? You can see it when a footballer (for example) ends up repeating the same word/phrase about 20 times in an interview 🙂

 I respect and appreciate people in ALL walks of life.... the Red Bull guys mostly sounded like half-baked surfer dudes

I'm guessing you don't really appreciate surfer dudes very much, which is ok, I'm not a big fan myself, but you might be better to just admit that right from the start.

I suspect a large part of it is playing to the audience and the athlete's giving the interview that's expected of them.

<div>perchypanther
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It’s all about attitude to risk.

Anyone who’s prepared to throw themselves down a mountain at extreme speed risking life changing injuries or death is also unlikely to give a rat’s ass about perhaps being perceived as less than  polished in a subsequent media interview.

Which ones are we talking about here? The ones doing it off road or the ones sustaining 100kmh in a group whilst dressed in lycra?

Saxon Rider

I have never watched any downhilly-type stuff before.

There's probably also an element of personality type in there too I reckon. Thinking of the many riders I know across multiple cycling disciplines, there's definitely a pattern. The pure MTB riders are louder, more energetic and excitable, and the pure roadies (and actually the pure XC MTB types too) much more "dry" and reserved in their manner, almost to the point of "awkward". Obviously this is far from scientific but based on a decent number and over many years.

See Cav's early interviews for lack of polish 🙈

Can we add Cricketers into the thicko mix? Andrew Flintoff is a Flat Earther.

<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 12px; background-color: #eeeeee;"> the professional road world seems to top the downhill world by a significant margin.</span>

The roadies are probably on nootropics.

That or as others have pointed out its aimed at the audience. Given how boring the few roadie interviews I have seen are (hence why its a limited number) it wouldnt really work as a follow up to someone doing some serious stunts.

I’m guessing you don’t really appreciate surfer dudes very much, which is ok, I’m not a big fan myself, but you might be better to just admit that right from the start.

I must admit I laughed at the first line of the OP - it was exactly like an "I'm not racist but.." intro 😆

Precisely why?

Everyone else who answered before you managed to see what I was asking/saying and responded accordingly. If there is nothing to it, then say so and say why.

EDIT: Your stealth edit doesn’t really make your first comment much clearer.

Sorry stupidest was a lazy choice of words.

Should have said ignorant, patronising, demeaning and cringeworthy.

If you compare the immediate post race interviews with the likes of Cav, Greipel, Kittel, etc. i.e. the sprinters then they are in the same hyped up state as DH riders after their run and their interviews are less "measured". An hour or so later and many of the interviews are more "on message"

MTBers are still so full of adrenaline after their run.

It'll be this, I think you might be confusing that and people enjoying themselves with being stupid!

It works both ways, if I went by the majority of interviews I've seen of roadies it would give me the impression they are all dull lifeless individuals and road riding is boring as hell. That is actually my opinion of it but I know somewhere there will be some roadies with an outgoing personality that get the same buzz out of it that a DH rider has at the end of a run.

Ratboy can't be understood by the majority of English speakers, doesn't even race properly any more and still sells more Santa Cruzs than Minnaar.
Road cycling is nothing like off road cycling.

Simple answer ...

Hardline riders need a screw loose to huck themselves off massive cliffs.

OP raises a mildly interesting point about different interviewee styles in different sports and gets a range of mildly interesting replies.

cant see how it warrants this

Should have said ignorant, patronising, demeaning and cringeworthy

Got to love Danny!

Maybe it's just the choice of drugs...

You succeeded in it being judgemental.

Different sports/different people.  I don't see that a high IQ would help in either so it's a bit irrelevant.

Greg and Gwin are pretty much always clued up at interviews. Danny's accent does him no favours but his answers are always thought through.

Some people  are just better in front of a mike than others I guess

There’s probably also an element of personality type in there too I reckon. Thinking of the many riders I know across multiple cycling disciplines, there’s definitely a pattern. The pure MTB riders are louder, more energetic and excitable, and the pure roadies (and actually the pure XC MTB types too) much more “dry” and reserved in their manner, almost to the point of “awkward”. Obviously this is far from scientific but based on a decent number and over many years.

I'm not convinced.

On the one hand there are plenty of top DH'ers that fall into the cold/dull/calculating/autistic* end of the spectrum.

An on the other there are some ferociously vocal roadies (Wiggins and Cav throwing tantrums in press conferences, Saggan, and Armstrong ust from recent history).

If you watch Bryceland and compare him to Froome, then you'd reach your conclusion, but that's just extrapolation form a very small dataset.

*speaking as someone who's definitely somewhere on the spectrum

It’s all about attitude to risk.

Ahahaha, that's awesome 😂

"The whole extreme sport field has it’s own vernacular and I suppose to the uninitiated it sounds dumbed down but then again it’s not supposed to appeal to the masses."

Hence the involvement of niche non-entities like Red Bull and Oxbow.

The OP has subconsciously fallen for all the stereotypes.

Is all culture and lifestyle invariably linked to a fair element of marketing.

You get intelligent people in all disciplines. However to get good in any sport you have to start young, so you very quickly adopt the culture of that sport.

So using stupid words such as 'stoked' becomes the norm, wearing trousers around your ankles becomes the norm, having long hair and not washing it becomes the norm.

Completely different sports, with different backgrounds, viewers, scenes, everything.  I'd have been more surprised if they were the same.

XC MTBers talk more like roadies, whereas DHers talk just like all the other other 'extreme' sportspeople.  That's why we have extreme sports and normal sports.

Vive les differences.

Well, in spite of chakaping's somewhat negative appraisal of my OP, I have done a few searches for adrenaline and IQ, and other related topics, and it seems I am not alone in asking such an "ignorant, patronising, demeaning and cringeworthy" question.

It seems that scientists, social scientists, and journalists (of course), have all been asking questions and, on the basis of asking them in the first place, are part of the ignorant, patronising, demeaning, and cringeworthy club.

In each instance, there is a 'type' identified as being 'adrenaline' driven or 'risk' driven, and in each instance a corresponding question about personality features and intelligence levels and types. It's a wonder any psychological/sociological/anthropological work ever gets done, considering how easy it is to call out someone for asking initial questions based on observations.

What [I]would be[/I] ignorant, etc., is if the person asking persisted in his/her assumptions after encountering the answers.

Bizarrely, in spite of what a few of you seems to have assumed, I have really appreciated being offered some good answers to my question, and have reconsidered my initial observations.

Oh, and this

Vive les differences

I really did mean what I said in the OP.

Danny Hart interviewer      Since Steve Peat only British rider to win 3 back to back .... hhmm??