woodlandplayer

@tommespommes: Richie is not only extremely strong, but has amazing technical skills too. Providing the power stages are reasonably technical and not overly long i.e. no more than a minute then the race wont be decided by the power stage. In Finale last year the 2nd and 3rd power stages (same, just repeated) only had a couple moderate crux moves and extended non-technical sections where Richie lost enough time to put him out of the win contention. I believe it is the intention of E-bike Enduro is give the rider more stages to race and the races are won or lost because of the riders ability to put it all together. Its still going to kick your ass but if you want more time racing the downhills then e-bike racing is a pretty nice option. The checking of e-bike drive units is very important and there are severe consequences if a rider is caught "cheating'. I am quite sure all of the brands making e-bikes are not looking to make e-bike racing motorcycle racing and are supportive of having rules and checking in place, but it's hard to control what the racer will do. Let's hope the EDR-e course designers can design courses where having a "cheater" drive unit is not actually helpful...

These videos are really not just a shred edit season recap. There is an actual dev story here…watch the videos and get hyped for the new season!

@thomast4: I voted for Nico. Looking at the time span he raced and how utterly dominate he was does it for me. That being said I do give high value to Minnaar for racking up wins across a wide time spread due to what that means. Staying fast and able over that long of a time period is quite amazing. I also vote for Nico over ACC because although ACC is a total bad ass and for sure the GOAT of the women’s field Nico faced way more competition during his rein than she did.

Shimano EP8 drive unit won the Valberg, e-EWS a couple months ago. You can’t ignore body weight. Richie simply outweighed the field.

Its impressive he is going as fast as he is with an injury that is not yet healed.

If we want to see Pro athletes entertaining us then there has to be avenues for them to make money. If they don't get mainstream coverage their value to sponsors is limited. If you don't care about watching or emulating/learning from the Pro's then fine, but if you care even in the least than we as fans of the sport need to do things to make it possible for them to make a living. If it means paying $100 bucks a year for on demand/live coverage of world cups I think its small price to pay.

If gravity riding is your thing then doesn't some assist to get back to the top to do more riding sound like a good idea? Or be able to rip through those flatter less interesting sections with some assist sound fun? Use less energy and ride more downhill sounds pretty good to me. Ask any rider that was sitting in the sweltering Ironton MO heat at the BME last weekend that watched the e-bike guys get in multiple laps on a very technical course while the rest of us got maybe 1 run to their 3. I am certain that everybody would have liked more runs (myself included), but the effort it took to climb back up or wait in the very long shuttle line made it very hard. Like myself, many riders ended up racing stages blind which is not the most fun on tracks that are super tech. Racing up stages on an e-bike is not what I am into. I want to ride down as many trails as I can in the time I have available

Thank you to all involved for creating something so amazing!

Works of art all over the place! Looks beyond amazing and a lot more pre-riding than in years past. The riders must be beyond stoked this year. Oh and nice work on the stellar images PB!

As a mountain biker we don't generally comprehend the word "quit" and it's especially hard for any of us to walk away from racing especially when you are still a legit contender at the highest level. My hats off to you Robin! Look forward to working with you in your team manager role with Ibis!