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Mathieu van der Poel crashed and went over the bars on the Sakura Drop (about a 5ft drop to a downslope) at the Olympics yesterday. The link below has his version of the story:
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/mathieu-van-der-poel-crash…
I've seen various posts and comments on other mtb sites and on social media that what happened to MVdP should be blamed on the organizers, commissaires, UCI, his coach, teammates, and everyone else except MVdP.
Here are a few key facts:
• The ramp was placed during practice sessions for safety reasons so that a rider who made a mistake during practice could still make it to the race.
• There were 2 communiques sent to each team informing them that the ramp would be removed during the race. Each communique was given both as a paper copy and sent over email to team managers.
• This was mentioned during the team managers' meeting the day before the Men Elite race.
• The slides shown during the meeting was also sent as a pdf to the inboxes of every listed team manager.
• The organizers and the commissaires did the exact same procedures above at the test event 2 years ago (which he missed because he chose a road race in Belgium instead).
• In other news reports, his coach and his teammate (M. Vader), both claim that they spoke multiple times to MVdP and mentioned the ramp would be removed.
Women Elite race is about to start.
I think it would be really rad if more towns and cities invested in awesome, dedicated XCO courses like this. I feel like we've seen a lot build pumptracks and mini bike parks at trailheads, so this seems like the next evolution of that. It would sure help XC become popular in the US again. While I enjoy the big, backcountry XC racing that's been the preferred flavor for last decade, it's sure not very spectator or sponsor friendly -- plus there's never any jumps or drops! Even this year at US XC National Champs, the one "tech" section was literally a few rocks in the trail.
Let's take the "bike park" out of domestic enduro and put it into XC, please.
More embarrassing is the Dutch women's team and the whole organization's reaction to the road race where they got embarrassed. Whining about lack of radios/info because they can't count breakaway riders out/in. Not even congratulating the winner who was standing beside them, pathetic.
Jolanda killed it though! Huge save on the drop and then passing PFP on the uphill rocks. Shredder!
Honestly I feel that ramp is more of a hazard there then not. Having someone brake check right before it like what happened in the woman's race is way more sketchy then everyone just committing to it.
It's called a "external locus of control"
in short, they can't grasp the idea that when something doesn't go to plan that it is a failure of their own/process. The athlete will deflect or blame anything and everything but themselves refusing to acknowledge they f&*(ked up.
This is a bit of a broad generalization, but something worth mentioning. Hopefully he can learn from it and use it to fuel the fire inside to kick ass in the future.
Why have a practice a-line different to the race?
Imagine if uci dh had ramps on stepdowns for practice days?
As early as the first ever track walk back in 2019, it was already evident that the course was much more technical than expected. The initial practice sessions were brutal, a couple of riders started wearing knee and elbow pads because so many were getting hurt.
Brake checking into a ramp you intend to pump for speed makes no sense to me?
Ps. you also may have missed that I said pre-jumping and not just jumping...
I didn't watch the livestream and don't know what the course was like just before the drop, but I could imagine that during an hour-plus long race sending it off of a drop seven times would take up more energy (and higher potential for flatting a tire) than just rolling the same feature. If rolling the bridge vs sending it was a similar time or even a bit slower it still would have been more consistent in the long run.
MvdP's crash and Neff's save were not the same. MvdP came into the drop thinking there would be a bridge, so he probably didn't try and pull up at all. Neff came into it and had to abort out of the side where there never was a bridge so she knew she had to pull up and huck to flat. It was impressive on Neff's part, unfortunate on MvdP's part.
This is why I stopped checking in to Vital in the first place, just FYI.
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