Presumably they don’t need to be a top racer, they just need to be a very good coach. After all, the top DH racers still benefit from coaching, but must be more capable on their bikes than their coaches, otherwise the coaches would be the ones racing and winning.
+1
I went on a jumps and drops course which was run by a very competent rider, but he wasn’t a great coach.
Essentially it was “do some manuals”, then 4 repeats of “ride over this jump while doing the manual type of movement”.
Each time he’d watch us do it a few times each and then we’d move on. no real individual feedback or analysis.
As a fairly competent rider (my weakest aspect is probably jumps and drops –hence the course–, stuff like Caddon Bank at Innerleithen, the jump combined with a descent and a big drop on the one side freaks me out a bit) I didn’t gain much from it. I certainly don’t think that there’s anything I couldn’t do before that I now can.
Someone else on here has described the (not so good) skills courses as “a guided tour of a trail centre” and I’d agree with that.