Olympic Course Update…

Yer right, it’s the arse end of England #baddumtish

You know what i have to reply with now don’t you!!!

North Downs, South Downs, Swinley. All have equal if not more elevation and have the advantage of creating more natural trail surfacing.

This is like saying, the roads round mid/north wales are far better for driving on than Silverston so why don’t they hold a F1 race there!

It’s a custom made televisual sporting arena, it’s been designed with elite athletes in mind and they like it, they want it widened in places for more overtaking. Who is (pretty much) anyone on here to comment on how good a professional sports arena is?

Your’ll be sad to know I’ve got to go now.

My final words, not that there worth much, Having the xc mtb in Essex is like having the clay pidgeon shooting down the local Quazar center!

Bye 😈

Did you go to The School of Cock with Frank Black?

it’s designed to look good on TV .

Why?

mboy – Member
Dunno whether to laugh or cry!

I’m not saying it looks hilly

so why the ‘jesus christ’ at my observation it looks flat?

Having been to the Olympic MTB venue and seen the test event there, I’d be willing to bet that very few people on here could get round one lap dab free. It is brutal. Very tough, very technical and with a lot of climbing. It’s also a brilliant natural arena with most of the course visible from three vantage points. Therefore it’s a big win for the Olympics. Close to London, good legacy potential, great for spectators and for TV.

Rossi46 wrote: we could do with a venue to replace Eastway which was flattened to make way for the Olympic stadium. Karma and all that

Errr…you do know Hog Hill bike centre has hosted Beastway/Eastway for a few years now! Anyway they’re discussing returning to the Olympic site by 2013, once they can configure off-road tracks which won’t come into conflict with pedestrians during race season.

I was at the launch event the other day, I wont comment on the technicality of the course as I didnt ride it ( I was shooting pictures) but the climbs looked pretty sharp, I was chatting to Grant Ferguson for a bit and he reckoned he would probably cover seven laps during the race, so that would be around 1250 metres of climbing in about an hour and a half ( if I remember correctly) which is plently IMO.

Because you didn’t read anything, just looked at a couple of pics, then posted comments!

nick1962 – Member
it’s designed to look good on TV .

Why?

Sorry about the dirty cut and paste, but FYI

Olympic Games Broadcast Viewing Levels
Cumulative Audience *
1988 Seoul 10.4 billion
1992 Barcelona 16.6 billion
1996 Atlanta 19.6 billion
Total Viewer Hours **
2000 Sydney 36.1 billion
2004 Athens 34.4 billion

That’s a lot of people. Hadleigh Downs has both a picturesque 12th century castle ruin and a decent view over the Thames estuary. Given that the Thames is an icon for London, I reckon the opportunity to show it as part of an event was a big selling point for the venue. Expect long sweeping views omitting the crystal castles and Canvey Island and maybe discussions about the Kent marshland of Dickens etc.

Dunno what to think about this, they probably couldn’t do whatever they wnated, but on hte other side, no-one is going to look at the MTB even during the olympics. To be fair the more I see/look at XC racing the more I think it’s actually pants and should be held with road racing as bikes are very similar and nothing alike enduro/DH bikes. But hey I am sure njee will be here soon to tell me I am wrong and I know nowt.

Some of the footie is at Hampden Park in Glasgow.. That’s pretty close to London,
London Road that is..

This is similar to all the threads you see about Mountain Mayhem along the lines of “it’s not MTBing, it’s just riding round a field, why don’t they hold it at [insert random trail centre]”

This is not the MTBing that you do where you pitch up to a trail centre, push up the climbs, mince down some red, talk bollocks about how gnarr-core you all were, faff with suspension, then retire to the cafe to eat cake.

The venue has to accommodate 40,000 spectators plus the worlds media so it has to be near some good travel links. It has to look good on TV so great big long trail centre courses in forestry land are not an option. It has to comply with strict IOC and UCI guidelines with respect to course length, number and severity of technical sections, amount of climbing per lap, approx race distance in a set time, the requirement that it can’t turn into a mud bath at the first hint of rain and the fact that the course also has to be “sterile” for a year before the Games so you can’t go closing off an entire trail centre in Wales or Scotland or a section of the Surrey Hills. Can just imagine the complaints on here if that happened!

The ONLY option is to custom build it and the venue they’ve got is pretty much perfect. Close to London, good transport, nice natural arena, easy crowd control, good for TV, a fantastic course which is VERY testing and will produce a worthy winner and all completely controllable.

As an added bonus, there is a new legacy facility created for afterwards, a new venue that can be used for grass roots racing, maybe a skills centre, a youth cycling venue – it’ll need some modification afterwards cos frankly it’s too technical for most people (even the riding gods of the STW forum) but what’s not to like?!

How many people slagging it off have actually been there, have seen the racing that it can give? I have been there and watched the racing and it was a fantastic day out. The main complaint about XC racing is that it looks dull on TV or even in person. This didn’t. It was bloody great, action wherever you looked.

Hello again.
It’s no more technical than Laggan, and will make xc mtb look about as spectacular as synchronised swimming! but hey ho the cameras will catch it all with back drops of a big river and a rather large oil refinery.
Oh yea is the M4 realy classed as a back road???

No, but my point is that if you’re building a brand new course, why build it in Wales when Essex is just as suitable, and far closer.

Some of the footie is at Hampden Park in Glasgow.. That’s pretty close to London,

Some of the qualifying matches yes, all the finals are in London. Not unreasonable to me.

. To be fair the more I see/look at XC racing the more I think it’s actually pants and should be held with road racing as bikes are very similar and nothing alike enduro/DH bikes. But hey I am sure njee will be here soon to tell me I am wrong and I know nowt.

I’m not gonna get involved with a petty slagging match over disciplines because that’s ridiculous, but I imagine XC is in the Olympics as its the only discipline you can plausibly ‘build’ a course for. You’re spot on about no one watching it, can you really imagine Olympic Enduro, over several days?! I’d also say that it has the highest level of participation globally, certainly more than Enduro.

As for XC race bikes looking more like road bikes than Enduro bikes… 🙄

It will be interesting to see how good the media coverage will be compaired to other uci events.

More cameras for sure! The whole course should be covered theoretically. It’ll still look dull I suspect, but it’s an inherently uninteresting thing to watch generally!

It’s a good job dh isn’t an olympic sport. they’d have had to race down the inside of the post office tower!

over several days?

I have yet to enter a several day enduro race, all the one I have done are one day races.

I’d also say that it has the highest level of participation globally, certainly more than Enduro.

Once again sweeping generalisation. I guess it depends if you’re in Essex or somewhere else.

This is not the MTBing that you do where you pitch up to a trail centre, push up the climbs, mince down some red, talk bollocks about how gnarr-core you all were, faff with suspension, then retire to the cafe to eat cake.

those are my favourite bits…

those are my favourite bits…

Just a hunch, but I’m guessing you’re not an elite level XC racer? 😉