Fort William World Cup Downhill 2024

Holy crap, that came up quick!! It is going to be an interesting season. All those team changes will make for fun watch.

will Max remember to broadcast the men's race in the US this time?

Our dude is on one this weekend  

Gas to Vlog has a new one out with a bit of insight into course changes at Fort William.

Cool, I am buying elbow pads 

From fellow Italian Davide Palazzari. I agree practicing on an officially marked course is a bit weird. Only person I saw doing it was Dan Slack from his own IG but it could be more people.

So, Semi's are no longer televised?

I know Loic also shares this opinion, seems abit unfair

It only exacerbates an issue nobody is keen to address, they're are too many riders at WC now and the tracks are absolutely fucked come finals. 

If they don't want people practicing on the taped course, then they need to close it down or disallow it in the rulebook. Otherwise... these are professional athletes whose livelihoods depend on performance. They are going to seek every advantage they can, regardless of whether it's against the "spirit" of the sport or not.

Same thing is happening at Big Mountain Enduro right now, with several professional teams already at Mt. Nebo this past weekend. The courses aren't taped yet, but everyone knows what the courses will be, so it's a pretty big advantage to get multiple extra days. Regardless of whether it's against the "spirit of enduro" or not, seeking a legal competitive advantage is to be expected in a professional sport. If the race organizers don't like it, they need to write it into the rulebook or find another way to disallow it.

I mean, I think this is the local organizer's "fault".  

I can see both sides of it.  The organizers need to take advantage of time to mark the course. Having the course marked well in advance is one less thing to worry about come race weekend.

The gondola operators need to take advantage of every opportunity to make money, so shutting down the course when there's racers and teams willing to pay for it doesn't make sense financially.

It's obviously a huge advantage to get to endlessly run the course in the leadup to the event. I agree it would be more in the "spirit" of the event to not allow preriding after a certain point.   Without a hard and fast rule about it, this was always going to happen.  I'm sure that any riders that happen to live near a world cup course take advantage to get extra laps in. Similarly, any race teams that can afford it are going to show up early and take advantage.  It's just the nature of the beast.

There's also a safety argument to be made.  With the risks the athletes are taking, more practice time seems like a safer option.  Having the course closed in the lead up week, when riders are on site and itching to ride, would probably result in complaining as well.

Either way, I'm here for the drama.  

What an odd opinion. Most of the WC tracks are in Europe anyways - seems odd to hear someone on the European continent complain like that. A South African has won on FT William more than any racer. Does he have an unfair advantage since he's been riding it so many years? Aren't the changes marked off to ride anyways? Guess there's always going to be opinions out there.  Stoked for WC season to start!!!

Loic has the budget to travel to tracks and ride them whenever he wants.  Loic just likes having an advantage over the other riders.

I would laugh if they move all the markers the day before track walk 

Definitely should avoid even the appearance of home cooking…if it’s taped for the race, it should not be open until track walk. Cmon now. 
 

Also: in Maven / brake pad compound discussions, I’ve heard that these guys won’t touch the brakes for like the first minute of Ft William track—anyone have some insight into that? It’s unbelievable, but I could believe it. When would that first real lever pull be?

Talk about the cringeworthy self-blindness of the pot calling the kettle: including World Champs, 7 of 8 WC DH races this season are in Europe. If you are from Europe, Mr. Palazarri, you have the unfair advantage of being able to drive to any of these venues to practice, while the rest of the world has to fly.  Kolb & Coulanges won races at their *home mountains* last year.  What is a week of extra practice on a mountain vs a lifetime?  The only way to completely level the playing field is to ban all World Cup racers from riding at all World Cup venues year-round except for officially sanctioned practice leading up to a race.  
Go ahead and add rules to the book limiting practice of an officially-marked course, but it will still do nothing to change the lifetime of "unfair" advantage European locals accumulate on mountains they grow up racing.

You're showing quite a bit of blindness I think. Palazarri is from Sardinia, pretty hard to drive through the Mediterranean sea to Fort William. And if you take the boat, it's probably a 30-40hr trip in total!

Plenty of people ride WC tracks before/after the races there, But doing so 7 days out from the race, when the course is marked and taped etc..  is pretty unheard of. So Davide was right to be pi**ed. He was complaining about the proximity to racing not the fact that people were riding the track. 

Likewise, Coulanges isn't from Les Gets and the track is not really open as far as I know, it's made for racing apparently? And I'm pretty sure Kolb is sponsored by Schladming and lives quite far away from Leogang. But whatever. Dem pesky Euros are all evil freedom haters.

so ya, to reiterate, he was complaining about riding so close to the race, with course markings out, not about the fact people ride World Cup tracks before the events.

 

If it's taped but not closed that's fair play, if people have a problem it should be with the race organizers not the riders. 

Bit of shameless self promotion but the latest episode of the pod is a season preview & we talked all things Fort William...

https://pod.co/making-up-the-numbers/dh-world-cup-season-preview-with-w…

Does anyone know if asa is racing this weekend?   Seems a bit early to come back from his injury, but from a few insta stories posted lately, it looks like a possibility.  

The money I would pay to heal like a teenager again

According to the downtime podcast he is!

There's now video of him riding on course on his instagram.

I would assume that he's not going to push too hard this round, and it's more about being there, being on course, and maybe salvaging some points. But who knows... he may go HAM.

Yeah from what Neko told John and I before we filmed our pre race show last week, Asa has been back on a bike (not a DH bike) for a couple weeks now, and is going to race. But definitely sounds like they’re trying to keep expectations within reason, and just start to get his feet wet at the first round. 
 

My gut tells me Asa’s impressive race craft will keep him within his limits, but he will still be in the mix. The kid is something special 

Mondraker looking sharp!