For anyone that read the home page story the other day, (yep – there’s a home page!) Phetetso Monese DNF unfortunately. Haven’t found out what happened, Google has failed me.

Well I enjoyed it and that’s all that matters!

To be honest, baggies are a bit of a blessing in the UK. There’d be way too many moobs on display if the avearge trail centre hero wore lycra.

Plenty of lycra wearing roadies happily use cafes around here and plenty of bars I have been to have not had one eyebrow raised when wearing lycra (one was run by a Berrendero though).
Would you like me to hold the closet door for you? You seem to have issues.

Tough crowd

I thought the course looked great, the racing was interesting, the filming was very good (especially considering how difficult XC MTB is to cover, and it was far from being all open and designed for easy filming). Didn’t even mind the commentary. Maybe my expectations aren’t as high as some of you – and I’m not sure you’re the best to judge what the average normal person would appreciate.

Sure the road race was more exciting from a racing perspective, but races are made by the racers and I’ve watched plenty of shit road races (I don’t remember the 2012 road race being terribly exciting – the road race here was an outlier in terms of having a course which caused selections). The MTB race was far more exciting racing than plenty of other Olympic events I’ve watched – and I enjoyed most of them too.

They had some videos linked on here!

http://singletrackworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/n1no-schurter-the-hunt-for-glory-bonkers-cross-training/
http://singletrackworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/n1no-schurter-the-hunt-for-glory-bonkers-cross-training-part-two/

for an mtb forum, you are incredible… from not knowing the term pretzled, to soft-tail..

But seriously the comment about lycra?! They are not doing a couple of loops of the forest and then popping in for tea & cake..

And as for the course being easy, wow i take my hat off to the keyboard warriors..try one loop at that speed. love the comments about mincing down the logs..

for an mtb forum, you are incredible… from not knowing the term pretzled, to soft-tail..

But seriously the comment about lycra?! They are not doing a couple of loops of the forest and then popping in for tea & cake..

And as for the course being easy, wow i take my hat off to the keyboard warriors..try one loop at that speed. love the comments about mincing down the logs..
Since when has saying a course looks easy equated to saying it looks easy to ride it at a particular pace. I venture to suggest that it is so evidently impossible (not just hard, impossible) for almost all forum members to ride that course at Olympian speeds that, for most of us, it goes without saying.

Do want a go on the track though. Not on their bikes though, that’d not end well.

You have to use a track bike – no bikes with gears or brakes allowed.

Commentary wasn’t great but footage was good. The big gap between shcurter/kulharvey and the chasers made the race less exciting but thats the way of it fairly often.

I enjoyed it, XC is very difficult to do justice to on TV and from what I saw they did well.

And re. Lycra, you make a decision, do you want to ride in the clothing best suited to the job (Lycra) or do you want to try and look “normal”? Personally, I’m a grown man on a push bike so will never look normal so I ride in the most comfortable and best kit for the job.

some had tubes strapped to the seatpost, shit or broke though surely, if you at the front end, and you get a mechanical in a short race, you’ll never make up the ground, so why carry the extra weight

You have to use a track bike – no bikes with gears or brakes allowed.

For the XC? That puts a new light on the difficulty level

The punctures were part of the plan – make it look like he can ride with the leaders without having to maintain it 😈

And like i said before, even if they did review the safety they would still conclude the possible risks are no worse than any other race of the year. Richie Porte who was one of the crash victims in the olympics said much the same when interviewed.