Lourdes WC

Does anyone have a link to the overall standings please? Can’t find it on UCI’s site. Enjoyed watching this today, only caught the tail end of last seasons racing but might fellow this one a bit more.

Fair point dannyh.

If you can understand someone being passionate about their chosen patriotism it’s surely not all that difficult to understand someone who dislikes patriotism just as passionately?

I don’t have any “daft Scottish nationalism” dragon. it’s just the country were I was born.

Maybe you’d feel differently if you worn your countrys colours at a world level event.
I hate the whole tribal “we was robbed” bullshite that comes with certain games but it’s great to see UK riders doing well and also nice you see national champs displaying their countrys colours.
They’ve earned them and should be proud of it.

I fully accept that’s one view Stu.

Personally I don’t care where they come from. I’ll cheer on Arron because he’s so smooth, I’ll cheer on Ratboy ’cause he looks like he’s having so much fun, and I cheered on the Frenchies as it was a home match, and it must be pretty bloody intense. I’ll cheer on Gee ’cause he’s so damned pro. I’ll cheer on Ragot as she teeny compared to the others, and I’ll cheer on Rachel as she makes it look so easy…

I like watching top athletes at the top of their games.

Today was Ace 😀

I fully accept that’s one view Stu.

And one I bet you’d agree with if you’d been in that position.
It certainly changed my point of view.

Oh and great to see just how far some people are hanging it all out for a win.
Makes great viewing.

I’m Scottish.

I find patriotism (especially in multination Team sports) all just a bit too inbred.

Ok, I’ve been selective but 😀

Oh and great to see just how far some people are hanging it all out for a win.
Makes great viewing.

I agree. There were quite a few moments where I flinched just watching it. There was a little gravelly slot on the exit of one corner near the bottom that a few looked like sliding out on. Watching Bryceland jump into that corner was also a bit of an arse-clenching moment, as was Bruni jumping nearly out of the course.

dannyh – Member

I agree. There were quite a few moments where I flinched just watching it.

I was half expecting someone to go off the edge of that last ramp and turn themselves into paste. They seemed a wee bit more laissez faire about catchfences, barriers and the like, quite a lot of people falling off precipices 😆

Great race and really good coverage, seems a step up. Gwin was on fine form. To me he’s a guy who rides his luck, on the limit all the time. So he’s going to win or fail. No room for mediocrity.

As for Brendog he has to be one of the riders most fans want to see win more than almost any other. He has skill and style to burn, just needs the killer instinct.

Those punctures some of the last 10 guys had. One of them had a bright blue tube. Was that a procore? If so, not very good advertising!

Yup it was Procore on Neko’s bike, but i think the wheel being “square” was the wheel real issue!

Brendog has undisputed skills but it seems it’s not just pedalling that holds him back, but the sheer strength endurance to be able to ride at his best in the latter part of a really gnarly steep track. However I can imagine that for some riders it’s very hard to build that athletic ability – just as it’s hard for others to develop their skills to the level of Hart, Hill, Bryceland, Gwin, Atherton, Brendog, Bruni etc.

When Gwin is on fire it’s like he has another gear compared to everyone else – he has a really smooth flow when he’s going at everyone else’s top speed but then he just steps up another level and manages to ride on the ragged edge for most of the course. I guess growing up manhandling motocross bikes in competition gives you a different perspective on rough terrain and speed!

Greg Williamson from my neck of the woods had a proper nasty crash

https://instagram.com/p/1YwC-KINqE/?taken-by=greg_williamson

**** me. That’s it, never getting on a bike again

I saw that earlier and thought he must be a broken mess. Glad to hear it’s not as bad as it looks.

I’ve just rewatched Gwins run and it is bloody amazing. He looks like he is riding a different track to all the other riders.

1:16:45 if you want to watch it: http://www.pinkbike.com/news/replay-world-cup-dh-lourdes-2015-finals.html

Shame it is not the full run.

Gwins run was awesome! Really looking forward to the next one, actually managed to watch most of it at work 🙂

I’d love to se a split screen of Gwinn and Bruni as it somehow doesn’t seem a creditable performance. Maybe that’s because there was no build up and it was mostly off camera and it just makes little sense for no one to be faster as the time goes on. What we did see of it was pretty impressive and that last corner line was genius. Maybe the relatively less cut track combined with his speed makes the difference.

Such a shame not to se he and Hill go head to head on that course or Gee get a decent run.

Great run by Gwinn, as somebody else said there is the outside possibility of gamesmanship by running off course in qualifying and therefore getting a ‘clean’ run in before the other top-20 guys and before the track got too blown out….but i really dont think that actually happened, a bit too far out for my liking.

He has form for this kind of riding and this kind of track, we may simply be seeing him back to his best, shame Hill is injured as on last years form from Hill this would’ve be an epic head to head….truly one for the ages.

Interesting that Gwinn seems to only use the first 50% of the bike’s travel on a course as rough as Lourdes, almost goes against conventional wisdom but i can see how it works….his suspension takes just enough of the hammering out for him to skim/skip/glide over the track as opposed to the others who seemed to take the ‘plough through it’ approach and ended up bottoming out, wallowing in their travel, holding up in holes etc….Warner implied that it is obviously effective (as Gwinn’s time demonstrates) but its very difficult to ride like that, he suggested only a few riders could manage it….i’d be interested to see others take that approach on tough tracks and see what their results would be.

An in form and healthy Hill and Bryceland could’ve taken the fight closer i think but Gwinn was imperious on his race run…just about everyone was excited this year that Hill, Gee, Loic, Jones, Neko, Fairclough, Blenki, Simmonds, Hart, Dale, Bryceland, Minnaar, Brosnan, Smith, Brannigan, MacDonald etc were going to have an incredible fight with some magazines and websites suggesting any one of 10 riders could win at any of the World Cup stops….sadly i dont think this will be the case, the two best hopes for making it interesting this year (Hill and Bryce) are injured or recovering, its maybe a season too soon for jones to mount a consistent challenge…Gee, Hart and Minnaar as good as they are cant live with Gwinn when he’s on it like yesterday, this has shades of 2011/12 all over it again.

😐

there is the outside possibility of gamesmanship by running off course in qualifying and therefore getting a ‘clean’ run in before the other top-20 guys and before the track got too blown out….

Expert gamesmanship 😆

https://instagram.com/p/1WTjG1FSsJ/

He just threw away the overall points lead there BTW

yeah that wasn’t planned!

brilliant weekend of racing. The course looked fantastic and the camera work was really good. Way better than the likes of Fort William. I thought the commentary was a bit flat though. I get the sense Warner has been hauled in a bit by Red Bull and Claudio was surprisingly dull. Apart from that it was fantastic viewing and Gwin was on another level.

Crikey, that Greg Williamson crash was something…

And that’s two races in a row now where Trek riders have snapped a chain in their race runs. Think someone should be having a wee word with their mechanic.

thought the commentary was flat because Gwinn had destroyed everyone before they even got on the air by that much time then wasn’t that much of a competition for the win afterwards.
Liked Claudio’s input on the choices of lines riders were making as well and how that would affect their times etc.

spawnofyorkshire – Member
thought the commentary was flat because Gwinn had destroyed everyone before they even got on the air by that much time then wasn’t that much of a competition for the win afterwards.

Particularly the way he destroyed them – by the time they came over that big rock, it was clear as day they were all four or five seconds behind so the rest of their run didn’t really matter. so many top riders hobbled with injury didn’t hel;p matters either – Smith, Bryceland, Atherton, Hill, Minnaar all at reduced capacity.

Still, credit to Gwin, he blew everyone away, can’t argue with that.

I thought Claudio was good, he came up with some useful insights and his chilled out personality made a nice foil for Warner.

They were both a bit lost when the timings failed on the last two runs.

sure ive seen an interview with Warner where he mentions he’s been told to tone it down a bit for Red Bull. Also that ‘what is a DH bike’ bit at the beginning was a bit cringey… but as said, Gwin spoiled it early on!

Claudio was maybe duller but way more insightful than Warner (and not afraid to correct him, which is useful- “I don’t think she lost much time there” “She lost loads of time there”) Warner did seem a bit lost for a lot of the time

And yeah, how were they so lost without the splits? Gwin went over the big rock somewhere around 2:05, you could tell as soon as it went to that camera how far down a rider was. When the first time’s set so early it’s not hard to keep track of splits etc surely?

Having a best time set early shouldn’t ruin it, certainly didn’t for me, having an unassailed record/run just makes it more obviously impressive… but it felt a bit like the commentators wanted it to be about “who’s going to beat it” which made it a bit anticlimatic every time people came up short, rather than “holy ****balls that’s fast”

Apart from missing the not top twenty qualies I thought the coverage was excellent. They did show Gwins run aswell, no one was going to beat his time, injured or not.

The thing missing in them showing Gwinn’s run was sector 2 where he pulled out the unassailable lead. Some riders were up there in his times for the first and third sectors, but that middle bit did the damage. Taking 5 seconds out of everyone in a minute long sector is insanely impressive. Sucks he wasn’t wearing a go-pro for it either so we’ll never know.

Having a best time set early shouldn’t ruin it

Shouldn’t, but it can do.
Gwinn’s early run in the dry at Fort Bill did the same thing, took something truly spectacular from Hart to get anywhere near it after the rain and he was still 2 secs short

I’d love to hear how/where Mike Jones **** up.. he was clearly well pissed at his run when he crossed the line.

hope it’s mentioned in the next “On the hunt” vid

Seriously does nobody actually look properly at the times!?

As i said earlier there is no elusive sector 2 FFS….

If you do the math and look at the actual sector times rather than just the split times you’ll see that Fairclough is only 1.5sec back from Gwin in Sector 2 as was Hart and Bryceland not this 5 second crap (That is cumulative).

Seems just that Gwin was able to follow it through all 3 sectors consistently. Nothing odd about it.

Have you forgotten where you’re posting, Si?

Haha… Oh yeah good point!!

Seeing that crash video made me look up the rules regarding leaving the track and from here

Practical guide for commissaires in mountain bike events

I get this:-

“9.5. Disqualification
A rider leaving the course is not automatically disqualified. He normally must re-enter the race course at the point where
he left it.
But often riders exit the course at a place where there is a steep descent that makes it almost impossible to re-enter the
course exactly where it was exited; or re-entry is complicated on account of large numbers of spectators; or it is dangerous
for both the rider and other competitors, or even the public, that he re-enters at the same spot. In such instances,
common sense must be used, in the spirit rather than in the letter of the rules, i.e. the athlete must try to re-enter the
course as close as possible to the place where he exited, but above all, there must be no advantage gained by having
exited the course.”

Gwinn should never have been disqualified according to that. Even if he gained an advantage (unlikely), “the athlete” didn’t exit the course, only his bike did.

G

Si – Member
does nobody actually look properly at the times!?

As usual the “truth” is somewhere in the middle ground as my analysis of the Top10 riders shows:

If you properly look at the splits, you’ll find that, yes Gwin was quick on both Intermediate 2 and 3, but that he was signficantly faster than anyone else in Intermediate 2:

You’ll see that Gwin lost 0.32% of his winning time in Intermediate 1, then gained 4.99% in Intermedate 2, and finally gained another 2.28% in Intermediate 3

Compared to the “average” time of the other Top ten riders (if you can call the Top 10 DH’s in the world “average”!) he took a massive 5.7% advantage away from just Intermediate 2!

But, look at the deltas graph and you see he gets consistently quicker all the way down (the mean slope of the graph is negative (in fact, 1.47% per Intermediate section). However, his standout section IS Intermediate 2

Only Hart also managed to continue to get significantly faster all the way down the course, and Fairclough the opposite, got significantly slower.

Riders like Byrceland & Brosnan just maintained their speed the whole way down

So as i said, he WAS significantly quicker than anyone in Intermediate 2, but he also did well (but not by such a margin) in Intermediate 3, after a good, but not perfect Intermediate 1.
😉

I thought the commentary was a bit flat though. I get the sense Warner has been hauled in a bit by Red Bull and Claudio was surprisingly dull.

^This.

Not wanting to take anything away from what was an amazing race with some stunning riding, I was left a little disappointed by the commentary. I thought those two would work a lot better together than they did.

Cracking race to start the season though and as much as I struggle to warm to Gwinn, I can’t help but be truly amazed by how well he rode. Superb talent 😯

One thing I’ve not yet been able to work out about the UCI live timing – are the intermediate positions based on the best overall time to that point or on that of the leader at that point? As MaxTorque shows above, they aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Speeder. is that the current DQ ruling or the strange temporary amendment from a couple of years back that allowed Rachael Atherton not to be DQd at Windham?

If that’s current and Gwin still managed a qualifying time of 15th or above after that crash he should actually be the current Series leader