Accelerations are MvdP’s strong point.
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High power longer duration ones from a rolling group. This course was so stop start, I think it favoured light riders.
Kate,
From the arm chair…
Women’s XC has moved on a fair bit from 2018/19. There’s a lot of new young talent. Covid disrupted some riders more than others. Overall, the level of riding has come up, both in fitness and technical skills.
I don’t know exactly what Kate does for training. I am aware that she had a period of what she called burnout, otherwise known as overtraining. Some riders never return to top form after this. Is Kate in this situation. No idea.
She is less fit/powerful than her current competition. This is evident in the short track races, where technical skills are much less relevant. It is not a single rider, like it was years ago. It is a fair group, call it 5 to 14, depending on the day.
Kate has never been a standout technical rider. She is competent, but not at the cutting edge. Kate was winning races when Annika Langvad was winning. Annika, as politely as I can say, was not a very skilled MTB rider. Very strong, very fit. That level of skill does not win races in 2021, on any technical course.
The Olympic MTB course was very challenging after the overnight rain. Any technical deficiencies were greatly amplified.
Can Kate turn it around? Of course she can. Will it be a struggle? Massive. Personally, I feel with the rate of new talent entering the sport, it’s not possible for her to dominate a season again.
She’d need to consistently beat PFP, Neff, Lecomte, Frei, Vas, (she’s an incredible new talent) and ten other riders who can win on their best day. I just don’t see it happening. However, I certainly hope she can prove me wrong.
In regards to her training, from what I’ve heard from her coach, she’s doing it all properly. The constant gym skills stuff she posts to social media is likely just to fill her stream. If it isn’t, she’s doing WAY too much of that.
I watch many young MTBrs improving at incredible rates, they absolutely don’t do it by balancing on a board in the gym while juggling. They ride, they ride tech, they continually push the envelope. That’s harder and harder to do as you age.
I do think strength and conditioning is important for XC MTB, but only if it’s carefully added to a program. A program that has immense fitness as the base, skill work on the bike next. Everything else, less.
It’s also nothing to do with her bike. Neff would have won on any bike. Kate would have lost on Neff’s bike. At this level they all have nice bikes, the differences are next to irrelevant. As brilliantly put earlier in the thread, only us amateur’s think bikes win races.
They don’t, people win races.
We’d need to have a lot more information on Kate’s training and general preparation to make any meaningful suggestions. As it stands, she needs to respond.
Only time will tell.
On another note, the Swiss team were out on the course after it rained, re learning the lines and dialing tire choice and pressure. They said that the course was very quiet. With most riders, just walking the course.
Sounds like impeccable preparation won the medals.
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Per Bradley Wiggins Pod Pidcock plans to race (focus🤷♂️?) On MTB world championships next year.
Crashing isn’t just bad luck.
Even if he thought the ramp was still there, that’s still an error (major error) on his part - especially since even in the women’s when the ramp was there well over half the riders were dropping it anyway, it seemed to be the fastest option.
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And by bad luck you mean he made a mistake.
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I see his biggest mistake as being overconfident in his abilities and arriving at the last possible moment at the venue. He was probably rushed in his preparation and just wasn’t listening when he was “told” the ramp wouldn’t be there in the race. But I agree with others, the ramp shouldn’t be there in training if it’s not going to be there in the race. If the racers don’t want to hit the jump in training they can use the B line.
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Taking the B line doesn’t help you practice the drop safely. The ramp allows you to case the drop without penalty and refine your speed and approach.
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Not a fan of things being there in practice, and then disappearing, or the other way round. I’ve done races (at a much lower level), where additional features appear after lap 1, and it always throws you.
You can’t do anything about the weather changing between practice and race, but you don’t have to make the course harder in between.
However, vdP should have known, everyone else did.
Sure….all of which had nothing to do with him leaving the Tour early. Completely unrelated…which has been my point.
Anyone else having trouble finding the replay for the women’s Olympic mountain bike race? I see the replay for the men’s Olympic mountain bike race on peacock, but not the women’s.
Tips and pointers appreciated!
NBCSports.com or the app.
Full coverage is up as a highlight but was not on peacock as a replay. The coverage starts 30 minutes in after the field was sorted.
if you don’t mind slightly questionable streaming websites the tiz-cycling.io has it.
Sounds like impeccable preparation won the medals.
The Swiss were so well prepared for the race even before the rain changed dynamics in the women’s race. The 123 makes it easy to overlook the Swiss men almost had a 2-3 and ended up 2,4,12.
There was mentioned that the Swiss team had a test/mock course for training, and it seems like that really worked out. I’d be really interested in seeing what they did for that.
David Valero Serrano rode essentially the same speed as Pidcock from lap 2-3. That’s crazy to me.
He must have had the Swiss cheese model going in terms of build up, conditions, course.
haha, The darkwebs
Shhhhh, don’t tell everyone about that…
GCN+ has full replays if you, uh, have a computer “in Germany.”
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Does it have Bart and Rob commentating? Or is it the same South African fella and Rochelle?
I honestly don’t know. I’ve been watching in the trainer listening to music at the same time.
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