This week we go for a slightly different video, shamelessly stolen from Andy Waterman's Twitter feed. Rather than a film, we're going for a racing flashback - the 1997 World Championships at Chateu D'Oex in Switzerland. This clip has highlights of the top 20 men, with names that should be instantly familiar - like John Tomac, Cedric Gracia and, of course, Nico Vouilloz. For 20 minutes go back to a time when men were men, bikes were sketchy and the fastest man in the world wore lycra.
u think it have sounded like football, u r wrong dude, in those years what ever u have watched on eurosport it was enjoyable, coz I think u have learned a lot from commentators and I was enjoying watching it.
Give me the best DH bike money can buy, with the blackbox tech and all that jazz, sent me back in time to that race, and i would still get my ass kicked
AAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh the year that I got into DH and religiously waited for sundays live coverage on eurosport as a frothing 15 year old, also recording it and watching it every day till the next round and then all of them during the off season only to of watched them so much they basically disintegrated :-(
Soooo nice to wake up and see this, it was my first World Championships!!! One of the best one week periods of my life, beautiful town, great atmosphere, and lots of friends from South America. It looks slow in the film but the top 15 elite men were going very very fast (remeber bikes 15 years ago), challenging course:
Fuck it Eurosport wasTHE shit back in the 90s. It's so crap now.
I remember seeing a helmet cam of a DH race back around then. And i thought it was the coolest thing ever. Unfortunately MTB wasnt big in Ireland back then and I never really followed up on it. Had brief flirtations but i didnt know where to do it or who to do it with and living in the back arse of nowhere BMX wasnt an option either. So just stuck with the GAA. I never forgot seeing that helmet cam though and 10 years late i finally got into MTB. Best decision ever but i do often wonder where id be now if i started when i saw it first.
Thanks Eurosport.
yea its crazy, im only 15 and watching world cup racing from the year I was born and comparing it to todays bikes, racing and technology is insane. MTB has come so far in such a short amount of time, i have no idea how much farther its going to go in the next 10-15 years.
I can't take my eyes off the short handlebars, the speed, the announcer, the forks...everything. Imagine 20 years from now, our kids will laugh at us and tell us how old-school we were...
I dunno, MTB technology is pretty similar to motox these days which is super advanced and a lot more research has been done to find the right geometries and spring rates, etc. I dont think the bikes will change hugely from now on. They will keep evolving but i dont think we'll ever look back at the current bikes the same way that we look at these now. Its like MotoGP, the bikes from the early 90s and before look so old school but then the ones in the last 20 years havent evolved a huge amount in comparison.
bikes have not changed that much in the last 15 years really...those guys had carbon fiber frames, disc brakes, 6''/7'' travel front and back...those bikes were high tech on every level and ...and lets not forget that the races (6min22sec) were much longer and the courses much tighter,,, the riders needed to pedal a lot more, hence the smaller and lighter bike used by racers...
Those were really expensive cutting edge bikes back then. Some of the stuff you couldn't even buy, for pro teams only. DH was still not that mainstream in the MTB world, XC was still king so there were very few DH bikes out there, hence really expensive. Many of those bikes would trump the cost of many DH bikes now. The talent was undeniable however.
Holler if anyone wants any great stories from that week, I have more than a few. Palmers rental car, the local strip club, Lopes losing his shoe in race run while posting a fastest split time, Leigh Donovan breaking her leg in practice and visiting some swiss voodoo acupuncture lady and still racing to 8th place (her worst worlds finish), Seamus Mcgrath testing positive and getting shown the door at our hotel, Missy's dad telling me about the million dollar deal he's lining up for missile. 90's, dislocating my finger while looking at breitlings at the watch shop, always exciting flashbacks!
I'll just pull up the stationary and I'll pedal while you talk... Deal? PB should do throw-back interviews and piece together the events and personalities of those races, just so we can all appreciate where we've come from.
I don't enjoy saying this, but Gwin today seems to be what Vouilloz was that time - just riding in a league of their own. However, nice to see Germans (yes, plural!) in the top 10!
I know so many fast Germans, but they just don't cut it on the worlds circuit anymore. I'm gonna go ahead and blame the bad winter seasons here (I live in Germany)
@KennyKillslt - have to agree with you there about the weather in this country :-( . Back home in Ireland I rode in every crap ... but here I just can't motivate myself sometimes to go out in another greeeey day. :-( Roll on Summer before I go insane !
I totally agree! Mud or snow rides should be fun, but I just cannot be bothered to go out and battle the winds only to come home disappointed and in physical pain from the air filling my lounges. The riding spots available in the off season don't even make me a better riders so eff that!
I have a bad feeling about this summer's conditions as well.
So go to southern Europe for some bike holidays! Lake Garda, Finale Ligure or even Mallorca. Summer starts early in these places and lasts pretty long.
I think there is a difference between Gwin and Vouilloz. Gwin dominates the World Cups. Vouilloz the World Champs. At World Cups also other riders have been able to win while all his years of dominance the World Champs. So before worlds there has a tension in the air: will Nico manage to win again. Now the question is, will Gwin manage again to win not? I know already the theme at the next worlds in Hafjell will be - This is a kind of new track for Gwin. Never won ist, never raced it and like ever, in training many spectators will not fully understand his strategy in the sessions, we he show not full speed at section where other seem to be very fast.
For example after #5 - 1998 —Rich Neare, reporting (and shooting) for The Mountain Zone said: The entire top-five of the mens race has won a world cup round this season.
i am going back to lycra- ripped the crotch out of my third pair of expensive ass "MTB" shorts... these guys did it right... and i look good in skinsuits... suck it modern mountain biking!
The only reason I wear baggies is to fit some of the knee pads, and to have hip pads when going a bit faster - but I found a set that works great with lycra shorts. Now need to find some lycra shorts with hip pads - I have Dainese and TLD, but they not good on their own.
I have no image issues when I frigging riding a bike in the woods.
Its crazy to see how as the bikes have evolved, the crowds have dropped. There's more people at that finish area than you would see on the whole track at most WC races today.
Oh wow that brings back lots of good memories. This was the first MTB race that I ever watched live - I was completely shocked how fast the guys were flying down the trails in Chateau d'Oex. And a great show at the Schwinn Dual Slalom race from Lopes and Palmer! And Warner nose-wheeling down the party area completely drunk. Goold old times!
Those bars are so small , wouldn't have made a different if you put a chopstick in the stem . The bikes sound like they're gonna fall apart half way through the course
sunn radical was one of the best bikes ever made and i`m not sure if bikes have really advanced much beyond that to be honest, maybe more travel and better brakes! make me a new sunn radical using columbus steel with modern brakes and i`d buy it!!
I have heard that the valving on Nico's suspension was far in advance of what everyone else was using. These were the days before slow-speed compression damping/Pro-Pedal (AFAIK first seen on the Foes Curnutt shocks, and then licenced to Manitou? I'm sure someone will correct me).
I rode Nico's V-Process bike back in 2000. Nothing came even close. Nothing until the latest generation of Demos, glories, V10s etc... and CCDB/BOS/whatever shocks... I was told to "ride it into that set of stairs" I said no, and they pushed me to do it... the stairs literally felt like a smooth ramp.
If you listen from 19:20 onward the commentator states that Nico`s bike has a carbon frame with 6 inches of travel front and back. Sounds like modern All whatever enduhard mtb to me.
Can anyone confirm Please, or this is an urban legend: Did Nico won the worlds on a GT Zaskar Hardtail! -- was it in germany? instead of the thermo plastic LTS, he used the hardtail on hid final run because the track was muddy.
Sorry for barging in like this, but I never heard that legend and I think it would've gotten around. I am not sure what Nico was riding in 1993 and couldn't find anything handy at this late hour, but if it was GT then it must've been an RTS. I also think he was riding for Sunn, but I was actually stunned to find this 1992 picture from Bromont, riding a full-suspension Sbike, which is wild and weird on all accounts: mercurypress.photoshelter.com/image/I0000Tc9Jry_e_kU
Why did it never occur to them to try wider bars and drop that seat so they don't look like they're riding in high heels???? Two things that are about the lowest tech you can get but make the biggest difference.
the courses back then were not as steep, or technical as they are today.. and they required a LOT of pedaling by modern standards... it was helpful and fast to have a seat position that still allowed you to make power in the saddle while not pitching you over the bars... it was a very different time.. these courses are more like "enduro" courses now days... the bikes were mostly steep angled bikes with 6 and 7" of travel... low and slack didn't become necessary until much more recently...
Do you have video of Nicolas Vouilloz in the 1995 worlds? and confirm this:
Mens Downhill at Kirchzarten, Germany. Nico switched to a Zaskar just before the start of the race due to the muddy conditions allowing him to pedal more than on the LTS's he and Mike King had been running. King came third.
Gt zaskar was advertised as: "The only hard-tail in the world to win both a downhill and a XC World Championship"
hehehe....i still have and ride my old Haro mx3, with the old Hanebrink Summit 7 fork. oddly enough, i havnt had to replace anything but rear rims and derailure since i got it in '98. ohh yeah, i put a different shock on the rear so it sits at 7" instead of the stock 6" it came with.
Sun and Nico really were on another level. While the Americans were adjusting their bolt holes on their M1's, Sun was making custom frames for each rider with different pivot locations, shocks and geo. Max Commencal ran the team and Oliver BOSsard made custom suspension that no one else had access to. Data acquisition telemetry that they were downloading at night and revalving the shocks. They had guys on the hill with cameras and doing split times. Doctors, trainers, coaches, French national money, they had what Gwin has today. Oh, and Nico had reaction speeds and the mental outlook that made him a champion on top of all of that!
ye gods, the lack of traction... just crazy how much the wheels are bouncing right off the ground with each hit. I rode in those days, and I don't miss that part AT ALL.
Totally agreed. Bikes have evolved so much, I can remember my first gt outlook. In would ride it to and from school because it had gears and wide tires to go off road. But when school got out, it was all about the bmx. hitting construction sites to find dirt drops and lips. Mountian bikes handled so poorly off road on jumps and dirt and always seemed to break easily. My gt pro performer might have been a tank but it was bullet proof and inspired confidence to ride dirt. It all really makes me appreciate the new technology dh and am bikes have today. No more bmx on the dh it's all about the big bike!
The sponsorship and funding in the 90's was at a very high level, you had everybody and their dog wanting to sponsor anything to do with the sport. Marque riders were receiving good salaries; teams were massively funded by large corporations. Still not near to roadie money being splashed out though. Unfortunately it wasn't sustainable and I think in the early 2000's sponsorship dried up a bit and you had many teams folding or cutting back.
Simple, Lance Armstrong stole it all. When he won his first tour, the cycling industry started a bit of a retreat into Road. In 2000 after his 2nd win, more of them, by the 3rd tour they all left and with them, went the media coverage and outside the industry sponsorships. Of course it was all based on a fraud/cheat/liar...but screw it, he helped make money for cancer awareness, right?
If someone ever gives me crap for riding in "pajamas"...I think I'll just direct them to this video. Fashion aside...what those guys did on those bikes is mindblowing.
Thanks Pinkbike, this took me back to my high school days when I would wait in anticipation to the newest edition of MTB Action to read about all my favorite racers.
Does anyone see the flex in the rear wheel and just the whole back of the bike? It was blowing my mind on every corner!! I can't believe they stayed on for a whole run
I remember one course, I think it was in Spain, where there were hardly any trees and you could see the racer's whole run top to bottom, with one camera.
I always though Piscal would eventually dominate like Nico but he never really did.
Super late reply, but know the track you mean think it was Sierra Nevada. Speaking of Spain what happened to David Vazquez? Last time I remember he was on the Volvo-cannondale team (though this was a long time ago!)
Yeah aye, I knew the had CF but I didn't think it was advanced enough to build a bike frame from. I didn't think they were stock standard bikes, a lot of them did look 'out there' in design for the time.
It looks a lot like Vouilloz's fork, who must have been on some prototype Boss setup. Makes sense, 2 french guys. Boss was way ahead. The commentator even mentions that Vouilloz looked more fluid or smooth than Tomac.
I know. I never knew the Sunn bike Nicolas Vouilloz rode had 6 inches of travel, front AND back.
Oh and it was carbon too! That's just amazing.
It was the time when they were racing prototypes or bikes that were not available to the public.
Completely different to today's market. Good stuff.
I don,t remember Nico riding a carbon fiber bike back then , i know he ran cromoly lots on the SUNN designs , GT was playing with thermoplastic designs and Giant was playing with some MCM designs but only on their rode bikes and crosscountry designs
The slo-mo of his from 12.42 to 12.52 is unreal. It's the opposite of your normal drift - the bike is facing to the outside of the corner while the rider faces the intended line.
It looks like a Sintessi Bazooka. www.galeon.com/clasicdh2 and scroll down. The colour is right, shock placement is right, and swingarm is dead-on.
And I finished grad school and got a job. Bought 1997 Yeti AS-3 to go with my 1994 FSR. I have retired FSR just recently - with new shock and forks it kept riding as a commuter. AS-3 was sold quite soon.
u think it have sounded like football, u r wrong dude, in those years what ever u have watched on eurosport it was enjoyable, coz I think u have learned a lot from commentators and I was enjoying watching it.
One of the best one week periods of my life, beautiful town, great atmosphere, and lots of friends from South America.
It looks slow in the film but the top 15 elite men were going very very fast (remeber bikes 15 years ago), challenging course:
Cheers
The M1 was so far ahead of the competition even the competition used them.
Turns out I directly fall on 13:19, it's Cedric Gracia's race run.
Enjoy, everyone.
However, nice to see Germans (yes, plural!) in the top 10!
I'm not complaining, its a pretty exciting/productive time in my life
—Rich Neare, reporting (and shooting) for The Mountain Zone said:
The entire top-five of the mens race has won a world cup round this season.
Wich is each round an other winner.
I was told to "ride it into that set of stairs" I said no, and they pushed me to do it... the stairs literally felt like a smooth ramp.
And then this little gem of Anne Caro, courtesy of Mr. Fearon: malcolmfearon.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Bliss-Images-Mountain-Bike-Archive/G0000Xe3vn5qtkaU/I0000SRzTMZwIU4w
Best regards to Leigh!
Mens Downhill at Kirchzarten, Germany. Nico switched to a Zaskar just before the start of the race due to the muddy conditions allowing him to pedal more than on the LTS's he and Mike King had been running. King came third.
Gt zaskar was advertised as: "The only hard-tail in the world to win both a downhill and a XC World Championship"
Only people since was gcross Honda
Fashion aside...what those guys did on those bikes is mindblowing.
Speaking of Spain what happened to David Vazquez? Last time I remember he was on the Volvo-cannondale team (though this was a long time ago!)
It looks like a Sintessi Bazooka. www.galeon.com/clasicdh2 and scroll down. The colour is right, shock placement is right, and swingarm is dead-on.