Full Video Highlights: EWS Chile Was a War of Attrition

Mar 27, 2018
by UCI Mountain Bike World Series  

The dust has settled (literally) on the first Enduro World Series of the year in Chile and what a start to the season! The Lo Barnechea Montenbaik Enduro offered up one of the most explosive rounds to date as two days of racing in the high Andes turned into a war of attrition, with riders battling to keep bike and body together on that famous Chilean anti-grip.

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128 Comments
  • 174 2
 Nice recap! Most of us know the results, so feel free to tack on another 5 or 10 minutes to these and really tell the story of the race. I'd watch a longer version, personally.
  • 32 1
 At least! This venue was perfect for drone footage with the lack of trees, I saw one clip where it does the follow me thing and it was awesome, I hope this means EWS is testing this out for the future - a drone each for the top twenty riders or so would be amazing.
  • 20 1
 Can you imagine having a screen split 4 way with the option of the 4 riders you want to watch simultaneously!
  • 4 0
 @mollow: that would be ideal, doubt it’s in the budget though.
  • 8 0
 They should do a partnership with Gopro and put a Gopro session on every helmet of the top 20 riders. This would be a great way to cover the whole race.
  • 16 2
 I can't believe that Katy Winton said there are only 11 women rider's supported by a factory. that has to change right now, women's is just as exciting as the men's and they deserve just as much support. Bike companies need to step up their game
  • 2 0
 @mollow: check the Rise of Enduro movie. There is a section in the movie that show Jerome and Jared runs overlapped
  • 1 0
 I think they have a deal with a TV channel somewhere so these things need to be this long to allow for all the other TV bullshit around the actual show.
  • 1 0
 Gutted to see Dailly drop out so early in the season, hope there is enough space to see him in de upper rankings challenging the top dogs again... And Maes... you Belgium Beast! Loads of respect to see you out there again!! Go Maes!
  • 1 0
 great video! Awesome racing!
  • 53 1
 Ravanel is a womanimal. Having her lead come down to nothing, not losing her calm, racing the transition XC style and methodically clawing back her advantage in the last two stages. Not only one of the best bike handlers out there but iron mental strength. So excited about the tight racing in the women's field, and it's so cool to see Hill and Ravanel come from the two extremes of mountain biking disciplines and win in the middle. Woot woot race season!
  • 9 150
flag randywats0n (Mar 27, 2018 at 0:40) (Below Threshold)
 yet she would have barely made top 70 in the mens.... gender inequality sister!!
  • 54 2
 @Funkhouser: Congratulations on your most unnecessary, irrelevant post of the year award. It's well deserved.
  • 53 1
 @Funkhouser: Where would you have placed?
  • 12 0
 @Funkhouser: she would school you!
  • 4 0
 @Funkhouser: that’s actually pretty impressive seeing the quality of riders who didn’t make the top 75.
  • 10 0
 You're forgetting that if she hadn't lost 5 minutes with the flat,she would be good for top 40. That's right.
  • 24 4
 @Funkhouser: so while we are on this topic...

Pinkbike, before downvoting me please educate my obviously smaller female brain. This is a real question.

Why is it so hard to grasp the difference between equality (of rights, of opportunity) and parity (of body types, strength, hormones, not to mention social constructs)?
Why are you (statistically on this forum, 95% white male) so convinced of your intrinsic superiority because of the gender you were born with, that you cannot recognize the Herculean effort it takes for the top women in this sport to get to spitting distance of the best male riders despite having smaller bones, less muscle mass, higher fat ratio, and brains that have been conditioned by society from day one to play a supporting cast role?

Performance amongst each gender is distributed alongside a bell curve, and the top end of the spectrum for women is faster than pretty much anybody who is reading this. Despite being physically strong "for a woman", I will be the first one to recognize that on average, I would expect the female cohort to indeed have less raw power and strength in all the sports that require such attributes (Interestingly enough for extreme endurance sports it seems that the top women can get a bit closer to the top men, im thinking for instance Chrissie Wellington). That doesn't mean that we, men and women alike, shouldn't respect and admire what it takes to be the best and progressing within our respective fields, and cheer the top female riders for being exactly that rather than thinking that the ultimate compliment is to "ride like a guy".

I wouldn't want my guy to have tits - why do you want me to have balls to be considered equal?
  • 4 2
 @asauvage: Preach, sister!! (rising hands in the air emoji)
  • 9 5
 @asauvage: I'd have a more sympathetic opinion of your question (accusation? I'm not sure which it is really) had you not resorted to victimhood and needlessly invoking race and sex the way you did. You also completely failed to acknowledge that @Funkhouser 's comment was rightly shot down by the PB community (-122 at last count). I think your prejudice towards white males being "convinced of your intrinsic superiority because of the gender you were born with" is as abhorrent as his misogyny.
If you really do want an answer, and not simply appeasement, then consider all of the below:
1) No reasonable person in their right mind would oppose equality of rights or opportunity. But there is a sleight of hand being played to effectively mandate equality of outcome. Gender quotas, minority quotas etc. (to name just a few) are designed to circumvent merit and objective standards (best person for the job) and determine who a company/ university can employ/ enroll based on factors outside an individual's abilities and achievements (Best Minority X person for the job). This not only inevitably leads to poorer outcomes for society but it also has the net effect of legitimizing racism/ sexism.
2) Performance and abilities between the sexes is distributed along a bell curve, however, the shape of those curves is different for men and women, particularly at the tails (where elite athletes, and genius resides). Simply put, males and females can have similar average ability in one area, but at the extremes of that ability there will be more men than women; Women tend to cluster more at the average, while men tend to have a flatter curve. As Christine Hoff Somers says: "More dumbells, but more Nobels." Corrective actions have been formulated and implemented without the intended effect, most recently (that I know of):
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/02/01/oxford-university-extends-exam-times-womens-benefit
You will see differences at the extremes between the sexes, because that is where they will be most pronounced- making the case it must apply to everyone else in the general population is an utterly idiotic fallacy. It's telling that when these things inevitably fail in their goal the de-facto response is the dreaded patriarchy, and the powers that be double-down on their efforts, instead of relying on factual, tangible data to address the (non-)issue.
Also, you should check around for better sources for information: Chrissie Wellington's World Record is within the expected range for her chosen sport when compared with the corresponding men's time:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3761733

So I would say this- Yes I agree that the differences you highlight are real, but I disagree (and there is evidence to support this opinion) that they need to be resolved and I reject (entirely) the methods being used to address them.

One last thing- before I discovered mountain biking I was an elite athlete in another sport, and the entire national team would train together- men and women. By far the most impressive member of that team IMO was a woman. Not simply because she performed at such a high level (World Champion, Olympian, multiple World Championship medals, multiple firsts for her country as many on the team had similar success but because she achieved those things while earning her M.D. She is simply the most organized, driven person I have ever known. And she never complained about how unfair life was or how others got more than she did. She understood that everyone has their advantages, and everyone has their hardships and it's up to the individual to make the most of themselves. And if they stumble (and even she stumbled- it took 4 Quadrenials -16 years- of training for her to make her Olympic debut, despite her results) then you pick yourself back up, re-assess your situation/ goals and go after them again.
  • 3 10
flag randywats0n (Mar 28, 2018 at 2:59) (Below Threshold)
 @asauvage: calm down princess, it was only a wind up... always some yank who takes the bait.....

see, that was another wind up. my comment was meant to be satirical. fwiw, as a husband and a father of girls i am a firm advocate of gender equality, equal rights, opportunity & pay and completely acknowledge that Ravanel and the others are phenomenal athletes - but i dont want to convey that on the internet because its boring. i was merely fishing for a few chauvinists to support my post so i could take the piss out of them a bit, but i guess if you have to explain the joke........ then again the fact you jumped straight on your high horse was kind of a win too. -122 tho! impressive
  • 5 1
 @Funkhouser: I'm sure that as a "proud" husband and father of girls you shared your joke with your wife and daughters? Or did the self-preservation centre of your tiny, cowardly brain actually do it's job and advise against it.
  • 2 0
 @Deuce-DeuceAndAHalf: Good info.. This us and them thing is getting ridiculous..jokes asides..

On that subject..I'm halfway thru a Joe Rogan podcast with Bret Weinstein and wife (evolutionary biologists)..interesting...
  • 26 2
 everyone talking about sam hanging it loose through that corner, and it was awesome to see... But Adrien Dailly did the same corner in much the same fashion, clipped in.
  • 6 0
 @ 1:24 in the video, incase you were wondering
  • 7 1
 Adrian is probably the cleanest rider. He just seem to float over the terrain. Looking at the race reports last year, his line choices were clean AF.
  • 14 2
 I think you're missing the point. We all love Sam's foot out, on the edge style. It just looks so rad!
  • 9 0
 Hill and Rude seemed to be on another level that weekend though...look at their time gaps. Except Hill somehow doesn't flat.
  • 8 0
 Last day many of us complained here we don t get enoght stuff about Adrien mad skills and speed... And this report was no exception.
Well, Special 3, that bit which shows at least 10 different riders, and no segment of the astonishing pass trought of Adrian clearly way faster than everyone else.... Told by one of the photographers: "faster than everything I ve seen before..."
Well gems like This is what exactly we are expecting to see, over who s changing the lead...
CAN SOMEONE RECOVER THE LINK of this vid? I couldn t.
  • 6 0
 @PauRexs: I saw a video of him at one of the races last year, everyone was going around this massive rock on the inside of a corner in a technical section... one or 2 of the riders in the video went over it but slowly, then Adrien comes along, and rides over it so quickly! it looked like he was going to fold the front of his bike but he just ride off as if it was nothing.

I keep hearing of stories of people seeing him do things no other riders were doing, taking unique, seemingly impossible lines, hitting blind chutes quicker than anyone else etc.
  • 3 0
 @PauRexs: Personally I can't understand the lack of coverage of one the top 3 contenders for the overall. Even if he had finished the race,he would get the same air time. And I'm not a fan.
  • 2 0
 @GumptionZA: SP3 past year in Finale Ligure Wink I was there and I know what are you talking about
  • 1 0
 @elyari: care to elaborate? how much of what i was talking about is nonsense?
  • 2 0
 @nozes: Keep in mind Adrien only raced 3 of the 6 stages so More than a few clips of him racing would be impossible to come by.
  • 3 1
 Sam didn't hit that berm, drifted the whole turn, and went faster.
  • 2 0
 @GumptionZA: Adrien rode around the outside of the corner and Sam through the isnide to middle, leaving Sam off the berm and a better line into the right, Sam then rode the middle of the right and had what appeared to be better exit speed. A little like Gwin did to everyone in the last round of last year. All impressive and amazing bike skills at that speed.
  • 1 0
 @velio84: Allien Nicolas Vouilloz heritage!
  • 19 1
 I like Sam´s attitude and the way he faces life. You don´t see him training on road bikes in instagram, nor talking about big wheels, nor following everybody else and clipping in, he chooses his own line in life as in the mountain.
Classic "I don´t give a fk" attitude most of my aussie friends have, and let the ridding do the talking
  • 6 0
 Guess Mr Hill's etiquette on a road bike?

m.pinkbike.com/photo/5639331

m.pinkbike.com/photo/5639334

@Chapon thanks for the pica!
  • 1 0
 For sure, his "just ride your damn bike" attitude is classically refreshing. But like, this is literally from Sam's ig (in full roadie gear minus clips, to boot):

www.instagram.com/p/U2hWAFC0kV

Granted, it's from 2013 and he's got one wheel on the ground lol
  • 6 0
 Road rides are incredibly good cross training for mountain bike fitness. It wouldn't shock me at all if Sam regularly throws one in a week to compliment his enduro training.
  • 4 0
 @jayacheess: yes they are in fact! but I guess you guys got my point.... he is more worried of riding his bike than to post photos in the gym, training etc.. posting everything he does...(with the exeption of telling everybody in the world that his wife is on point!)

@RXN059 @LuisCR
  • 2 0
 @LuisCR: thanks for the reminder why I am so glad Sam don't ride spesh no more. That was his bad period. Full stop.
  • 3 1
 Mi hermano de un otra madre! Soy de Santiago! Hola! Vive en los estados unidos ahora, mi corazon por tu! Smile
  • 20 2
 Like a season of WCDH racing in one weekend.
  • 24 0
 I didn't see any perfectly manicured jumps though
  • 3 0
 @Jvhowube: I bet the new-wave-DHers saw the these clips and said "how sketchy" " aghhhh" ..#wherearetheberms
  • 3 0
 @Lagr1980: #Ionlyridepark
  • 13 1
 Chile is on another level
  • 6 0
 come visit amigo!
  • 1 0
 @panchocampbell: Some day, brother! I was born in Santiago and I hope to return someday!
  • 1 1
 @EastCoastDHer: then you are Chileno weon!!!!!

hit me up when that happens, know a lot a friendly riders all over the place, saludos!!
  • 2 0
 @panchocampbell: jaja soy de chile tb mi perro
  • 8 0
 think it's safe to say the mens title is up for grabs this year, Hill, Maes and the return of Ritchie Rude are all gonna be challenging for the title.
  • 9 0
 That must have hurt Melamed, thinking you nailed it only to learn later that Hill is 12secs faster than you.
  • 1 0
 "But everyone's a good bike handler" so good
  • 8 3
 EWS as a race series is amazing, the field of riders gets more exciting every year and the locations and tracks look fucking epic. I mean you're not going to see the WC going to Chile or Columbia any time soon. As a spectator sport it totally sucks, 20min for a whole weekend with 7 stages, with all excitement removed, the only way you know an actually race is happening is the table at the end with names and times on it. The videos look nice and I know they can't stream it live or anything, but they could introduce some kind of build up and suspense in the editing, it's hardly edge of your seat stuff.
  • 4 0
 In my opinion an alternative or complementary video series of EWS focused more on the technichal bits and riding should be done. Where we can apreciate more the riding and skills of top riders. Here it gets eaten by leader changes, interviews, etc which have to be made to, but we lost the focus on the riding a litle bit i would say, making each video more similar from it s precesor...
  • 5 1
 Great recap as usual, maybe missing some more technical and riding bits. But when we will get a similar one in Spanish @EnduroWorldSeries ? And not just one now and them with Iago reading pre-written lines. I mean one for each event, full coverage for the 2nd most spoken language in the world (only after mandarin) and with 3 events this year in Spanish speaking countries.
  • 8 3
 Twice I heard Lo Barnekea... that guy has been there maybe a week and he still doesn’t know how to pronounce the name of the venue?
  • 3 3
 And that's the nearest pronounciation he got! Free tip for this next weekend: MUH-NEE-THUH-LAYS (TH as in Therapy). Nice video anyway.
  • 1 0
 @Fulgacian: Get ready for Mañisales
  • 7 0
 "WOOOOO...BONZAI" -- Ravanel
  • 7 0
 Watching Sam make that back tire dance...mesmorising
  • 6 0
 Why was this cut from the highlights......
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6CllwDV-NE
  • 8 2
 C'mon man, at least pronounce the venue slightly decent..; )
  • 2 0
 Confused it with Bardonecchia I reckon.
  • 2 0
 @BenPea: He's doing Italian pronunciation. If that's the assumption, he's spot on.
  • 7 1
 I'd love to know what Callaghan's weird mechanical was. Anyone know?
  • 10 14
flag murfio (Mar 27, 2018 at 5:20) (Below Threshold)
 I think his foreskin retracted on one of the stages and he had to stop to readjust it.
  • 2 0
 @murfio: The worst
  • 6 1
 I imagine this is what mountain biking on Mars is like.
  • 24 2
 There’s less gravity on Mars which means you can’t ride downhill as fast as on Earth. But you can send it further
  • 5 0
 @WAKIdesigns: Things that make you go hm
  • 5 0
 @cdmbmw: Next Year -> Red Bull Moonline and Red Planet Rampage?
  • 4 1
 Oh EWS I missed you so much!! Love that intro with Sam coming down the rocky face. Richie and Jesse I am sending you my good vibes for this season. Good luck all
  • 3 0
 My greatest wish on highlight videos like this is that the rider's name would always be displayed at the bottom. I really don't know how all you guys tell who's who.
  • 1 1
 So much statistics, so little racing & insight. 99% of the people watching these vids already know who won so why not focus a little more on the things we don’t know? Curtis own show tells twice the story on half the time..
  • 2 0
 That was some nice coverage. I would love to see more action cam footage though. I would pay a ticket price for some decent racing footage and data.
  • 3 0
 I love the EWS! Great coverage as always, although it would be good to have some coverage of the U21 as well.
  • 4 0
 Watching Sam Hill in these videos is the ultimate form of nostalgia.
  • 3 1
 Oh ! .. EWS Chile! .. all stage fullface helmet on!! What a amazing downhill race .. truly exciting and happy face on every racer .. big thank you EWS. LOVE YA
  • 3 0
 If I was Richie Rude I'd be shopping around for new sponsors. Dude's been absolutely plagued with mechanicals.
  • 3 0
 He's kind of an Alain Prost in his early 80s Renault days... every race was brilliant for a couple of laps and then DNF
  • 1 0
 @JaumeV18: Haha true that
  • 1 0
 Maby he should soften up his suspension like hill did?
  • 2 0
 Cecile Ravanel.. the only way for any other girl to win is if she doesn't show up to the start..
  • 3 1
 Ask Pinkbike: I see a lot of people asking for coverage similar to DH, why doesn't this happen with EWS?
  • 4 0
 no need to ask Pinkbike, think about spreading X number of cameras on a 34km course, in the middle of nowhere, certainly without network connectivity or electrical sources... got it? now imagine the infrastructure, planning and men/hours required behind all that and now think on $$$, tons of them. DH courses range in between 2-4km, with all requirements at hand, that's why Wink
  • 2 0
 @elyari: its even hard to do at a resort with power, network, and air conditioning.
  • 3 0
 Dailly DNF ?? What happened ?
  • 1 0
 Looking forward to the helmet cam and team videos and they get released as well , plus another event this weekend . Oh hell yeah it,s enduro season!!!!
  • 1 0
 Love these, but agree with others, more racing action even longer format. Keep it up EWS killing it all around
  • 2 0
 So good, love these recaps...wish they were longer, but still great!
  • 1 0
 Stocked to see @Rebeccabaraona getting the backing she deserves!
  • 1 0
 Awesome edit. The music though..
  • 1 0
 Thank you EWS and Pinkbike
  • 1 0
 Nice edit - But we need to see more riding!!
  • 1 0
 Anyone know what mechanical/crash caused Graves to be DNF?
  • 1 0
 His it says something about broken wheel.
  • 1 0
 Bad music ruins the video...
  • 1 0
 Ric, I'm sure you're a cool dude, but how do you pronounce Church?
  • 1 0
 As they say back home (Chile):
"Por la razon o la fuerza!" Jajaja!
  • 6 6
 "like a butterfly emerging into the spring air." -WTF
  • 10 2
 Is there not enough fireworks and rock music in the intro for your liking?
  • 10 11
 Brace yourselves... the “Sam Hill, you fing legend” and “flat pedals win medals” comments are coming.
  • 53 5
 Sam Hill could ride your Mom down the hill and still win. Fucking legend
  • 3 3
 @chunter:
My mum is clipless, Sam probably wouldn’t want to ride her.
  • 2 9
flag marcsb95c (Mar 27, 2018 at 3:33) (Below Threshold)
 @chunter: having ridden your mom, I can confirm that mother’s are definitely fast.
  • 2 0
 @Rabbuit: Phew... I had to read clipless twice to make sure you weren't a truly grotesque individual. f*ck, maybe it's me.
@marcsb95c: You know he only won because everyone else was fannying around trying to clip back in after sticking a foot out on every corner.
  • 2 0
 @BenPea: the only reason.....riiiiiight
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