Sixty Seconds with Magnus Manson Part Two - Video

 Lack of racing scene

 The thought has crossed my mind as well, but I think we just have a skewed view since we live in the "sea to sky" region of BC where mountain biking is huge. Outside of BC and a bit of Quebec, DH mountain biking isn't actually that big in Canada since the terrain is mostly flat. I'm not too familiar with the UK, but I know they have double the population that we do overall, and I am guessing the population that is within a few hours drive of DH terrain is much higher than in Canada.

That being said, I am still surprised that we don't have more top level DH racers coming out of Canada.

 I have made some observations, that come from living in Canada and discovering MTB 24 years ago, then returning home to Australia 16 years ago, and then once again returning to Canada 9 years ago. I've been obsessed with riding the whole time. This will take a bit of explaining, but I think it will answer your question well.

When I left Canada, I thought I was generally capable at riding. There was no Aline at the time. The scene had only recently transitioned from riding exclusively multi use trails that had been there for a long time, to rider built trails. These new trails were covered with skinnies, drops and other woodwork. High speed jumps were nowhere to be seen, and high speed trails were usually in a straight line. It was all about steeps and stunts, and linking features together in the jankiest of janky ways.

I showed up to the DH scene in Oz, and it was mind blowing. They were dominating the world at the time. All their trails were rider built and were high speed with sharp corners on slippery dusty dirt. Hitting flat corners pinned and hitting gaps immediately after required drifting and jumping skills. There was not a lot of vertical drop, so to make a track last 3 minutes they had a lot of corners. They were not interesting to ride slow in the slightest and had to be pinned to make the gaps. I no longer thought I was a capable rider. I actually sucked big time.

Next up, The rest of the world outside of Canada looked at the Aussies and figured it out. But Canada wasn't even really in that scene so never really figured it out at that time (of course things have changed more recently), while Europe put an end to the Aussie domination.

And now, the biggest reason is because hardly anyone in Canada races. The season is short, and the riding is so amazing in so many places that the last thing Canadians want to do is spend 6 of their precious weekends waiting in line to ride a shitty track. They'd rather do epic road trips to amazing places and ride incredible trails. Back in Australia there are so few DH tracks that when there's a race weekend everyone shows up because that's the only way you'll ever get to ride that track on private land. Australian's own a DH bike to race, whereas Canadian's own them to rip laps of Aline. I suspect that in Europe it's similar to Australia.

So, to recap
#1 back in the day the riding style was full DH racing in Oz (and Europe) while Canada was wobbling around on skinnies.
#2 Canadian riders would rather do road trips and hit 57 incredible trails instead of 1 shitty race track. (and hence why enduro is getting popular because it samples a riding area with a diverse selection of trails instead).

 @kram: well said mark

 @kram: Hey I think I rode with you back in Brisbane, I was the Canadian from Van isl and you took me out quite a bit, thanks for the rides. I remember seeing Chris Kovarik destroying trails in Nerang. The scene and trails were fast and loose where as over here in bc it was slow and steep. I think it's changing now thanks to Steve Smith, your gonna start seeing more with Mark Wallace and Finn lles and that's just the beginning. Glad to see your still riding

Adam

 double post

 The issue is that because Downhill is not an Olympic event, cycling Canada give it as little finding as possible. To put it in perspective, when I went to worlds as a Junior, there were three Junior men, and 5 Elites for both men and women. For XC, there were well over 30 athletes between U21, U23, and Elite. Because they could potentially earn Canada Olympic medals, cycling Canada give almost all of the funding to events like road, velo, and XC racing; even though we have a very large downhill field.

 I mostly concur with what people have said so far. But the population difference is massive between not only Europe, but any european country and Canada. Especially the population close to hills / mountain. In Canada besides BC and Quebec, there is not much. I France, there are so many people mountain biking all over the place, that now you have casual races all around the place all summer long. BC is 3 times the size of France... A French cup would take less effort to travel to than a BC cup, and you don't get nearly as much competition in the latter one. Looking at some races in Provence a few years back who do you see at the top? Names like Vergier, Bruni, Barelli, etc... so there is some mean level as well.

 @FlavienB: I think perhaps population has some effect, but that doesn't explain why a massive country with few people like Australia dominated for years, and still has a presence. It also doesn't explain why in 2006 there were something like 460 competitors at the national championships in Thredbo, while at the same time in the US there were barely 100 at their nationals. I use 2006 as an example because it's the last one I raced and remember someone in the US commenting on these number disparities.

I think plain and simple it comes down to what priority the actual riders in an area put on racing. Squamish has more mountain bikers with a DH inclination than I think the whole of Australia had in 2006, yet they can barely scrounge 20 people together to do a gravity race that costs $2 to enter, while Brisbane QLD was getting 150-200+ people to pay $60 to race a local race when I was there.

If you don't race, you don't get as fast as you could otherwise. If you don't look at a track like it's a race track and just ride for fun, you will never get as fast as you could if you looked at every ride as training for a race. I don't know a single person in Squamish personally who even enters the Whistler DH races whereas in Brisbane every single person I knew who owned a DH bike was at the races every single time unless they were injured. All 150-200+ of them. Extremely different scene. I've never heard anyone in Squamish refer to their ride as 'training', yet that's how people regularly described their rides in Brisbane.

It certainly comes down to priorities, and has little to do with support from the powers that be. It's the lack of support of racing by the riders that results in a lack of support from above. Bottom line is very few people in the highest density MTB areas in BC care to enter a DH race.

The reason Wednesday night racing in Whistler is as big as it is because more of the competitors are from Europe and Australia than Canada.

If you took a percentage of number of DH bikes owned vs number of people entering a state/provincial DH race it would be something like 75% for Brisbane and 0.1% BC (to pull some numbers out of my ass, but I'd say it's not too far off).

 @kram: True that actually! You see the same thing with backcountry skiing, people are just happy to go ride a bunch of runs or trails, to get stoked. The performance part of it is for the most part left behind.

 @goldstreamubrew: yeah mate, let's go for a rip next time you're in Whistler or Squamish.

 UK doesn't have many big free ride trails. it only really has dirt jump spots and race dh tracks. Hence why you would see more riders racing dh or riding DJ as oppose to slopestyle. we also have allot of 4x and ds here too. i think it's because we don't have much space and you can't really go out a build big hits in the UK unless you are lucky and own some good land. Edit- canada has loads of big stuff probs why there are allot of big freeride names.

 I think you forgot to multiply by 100 in your percentage calculation...

 @samtomkins: cheeky c*nt

 @samtomkins: Yes many apologies for that going too fast! Hang on the Government are knocking on the door, something about my taxes, silly f*cks must have ready your post!