Video & Story: World Cup DH Riders on the Developing Union Effort
Things are definitely changing at the World Cup, and none are more keenly aware and concerned than the riders themselves. With the organization and broadcast rights sold to Discovery, the riders have decided to form a union to represent their interests to the powers above.
The riders will elect a representative to liaise with ESO, which owns and operates the EWS, as well as the UCI and Discovery to voice the riders’ interests when it comes to rider welfare and race logistics.
Henry Quinney caught up with several of the riders during this week’s track walk to hear what they had to say.
Both Vali Holl and Wyn Masters said it's scary to already be mid-season and have very little information about what will happen in the future. "We don't know anything about next year, nothing, no dates, no locations, how many people are going to qualify or DH1, DH2," Holl explained. "Like you just hear bits, but you have no idea about what's going to happen." While it's rumored that the race structure will largely remain the same, the uncertainty puts professional riders, whose careers are in the hands of the race organizers, in a uniquely vulnerable position.
Riders began discussing a possible union as early as 2020, Loic Bruni said, when many riders felt they had no say in how the UCI and Red Bull responded to the pandemic. Now that the sport is at a point where change is inevitable, Bruni has spearheaded an effort to make sure that decisions around downhill racing account for those most affected.
Finn Iles, who describes the effort as more of an association than a union, has worked closely with Bruni to lead the charge and echoed what others said about needing representation: "Right now we have absolutely no say in anything. We have no say for track, we have no say for prize money, we have no say for safety, no say for anything. And we're the ones that are the product."
Several riders mentioned an odd ramp at the finish area that they consider dangerous as an example of a course feature that likely wouldn't exist if the riders had been asked for input.
The first union meeting took place last week at Lenzerheide and the second one just happened in Vallnord.
Greg Minnaar, who serves alongside Myriam Nicole on the UCI Athletes' Commission, said that he believes the changes will be relatively subtle and positive, and he trusts that ESO has the experience in mountain bike racing to successfully take over World Cup downhill racing.
At the moment, details are scarce and credible details even scarcer, especially when it comes to the rumored changes to the race format and team setup for next year. We have reached out to both the UCI and ESO for comment and will update this story as more information becomes available.
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If cutting the field to the top 30 racers is what we need to do to get more support for juniors, men's and women's parity, more of the track on the livestream, and better national series, then I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.
Bottom line, we need more information.
Yes we do need more info, but cutting to top 30 would be completely and utterly misguided. Take off your devil horns, stop bootlicking the industry plebs and just think about it for a second. Top 30 would favour the juggernauts and stifle the come-up of countless talented young riders.
A positive change would be to actually maintain or expand all the fields, increase prize money, and actually pay every single rider that makes the cut.
@commental: oh god, that's a good point actually. I absolutely love the pacing of WCDH racing right now and would hate to see that watered down for endless medical ads.
Slimming down the field to 30 is just going to stagnate the top riders and make it virtually imposable to make the show. It'll turn into a F1 or MotoGP style thing where rider slots allocated by teams and not biased on skill (and guile) but on marketing. Who is going to kick Greg Minnaar out of a seat so some unknown kid from NZ can get a ride?
Just too many unknows leading to too much wild speculation. If I had spent my whole life on a single minded pursuit with untold sacrifice and luck to make it into the top mountain biking show I would be a little pissed.
that's the beauty of cycling, it can theoretically be picked up by pretty much anyone
Moreover, at least in Europe, there are tracks in the WC standard ... it would be enough to organize the national teams on these tracks to prepare the pilots for the jump of the category.
But the Pro/Elites are what people want to see, that's the same in all walks of life, it's the best of the best... That's what pays the bills. That's why RedBull only put the elites on coverage... lets start with getting some of the junior males and females on some coverage... after all, why not ? They've got the cameras set-up, it's not like it's a dedicated channel that needs sorting like say Eurosport, it's just a RedBull slot, so why are they not showing the Juniors ?
Removing the 30-100 from the Elites, will that really strengthen the Nationals ? Or just weaken the Elites ? Where's the incentive then for the nearly Elites.... If they know they're going home by Friday...will they want to bother ? But that doesn't necessarily mean they'll go to darkest Wales for a national instead.
The trickle down to the national level won't work, just like it doesn't in Formula feeder series, WNBA or any other sport where there is an obviously better product.
Downhill Southeast, Eastern States Cup, Northwest Cup, NorthStar Downhill Series, Trestle Gravity series.
I don’t see a move like this helping the national series, adding a dozen or less pros back to the races won’t help the country develop more riders. What we need is more races and more families/kids/individuals racing so race organizers have an incentive to hold more races at more locations. We also need organizations like USAC to offer a lot more support for athletes as well as make it easier for organizers to host a National. There’s a reason why we only had 3 Nationals this year…
Agree. We ran a race team, probably 25 years ago or more, and had a driver coming in with some backing from Mobil 1 nationally. Just before the season started, Mobil1 pulled their sponsoring of all national series in Europe, because they made a deal with McLaren for F1.
Being an avid motorsports fan and competitor for 35 years, I desperately hope MTB won't follow the silly money for the few.
if you slay the corporation, everyone one of these racers is out a job.
what this is and should be is, negotiating symbiosis.
TLDR: stop being a reactive child. the world and economics of commerce are never black nor white. its a million shades of grey.
Oh and stop being a condescending prick, we know how the world works, obviously better than you who is just towing the company line, dude you're brainwashed!
[sent from my SONY, turnover USD 81 billion]
unfortunately, there are many who simply cannot and will not understand the world in which they live and have utopic socialist fantasies that will never happen or succeed.
I am not raging against business, or profit I am angry about corruption and exploitation. I think you have the idea that a Corporation is a benign entity used to make wonderful items we all rely on and the world would stop turning without these behemoths. What they are is almost untouchable legal entities used to make profit at any expense, including human life and environment. They can only survive if they grow endlessly, and obviously that business model has a finite lifespan. This we are seeing manifest in current world conditions as these Corporations start eating their own tails, like the trillions in stock buybacks in the last decade. These buybacks used to be illegal until highly paid lobbyist further corrupted law makers and got it all legalized so they could steal more money from ignorant investors.
Let's take this giant MF'er Blackrock, one of the most powerful corporations in the world, their current scam is to buy up huge tracts of housing at one time, thousands of homes, sometimes over market value, then rent them back to the public at a 1 or 2% profit. Check them out, just randomly google shareholders in any of the top 100 corporations, Blackrock will always show up as one of the top owners. These Corporations you admire so much are buying your shit out from underneath you and will make you pay for the right to even exist, did you know about 10 corporations control most of the food in the world? So 10 men making all the decisions about how and what we eat, that is not a good thing.
Only a union will give the riders power to have a say in their futures.
Any loose association of riders that is not a union will fail. Thats one of the reasons why corporations spend millions of dollars fighting unions starting up.
WHEN you have a union you will be able to approve track design before getting to the track. And then again when you arrive and throughout the weekend.
Having a finish line in a carpark so they can sell VIP tickets is fine if the riders are getting a cut. Which mean $$$ for EVERY rider that qualifies
Having a narrow gantry over bridge which would be fatal if someone crashed into it at race speed just so they can sell VIP tickets is probably unacceptable in most people’s eyes
I would be surprised if normal padding without an airbag over the top of the gantry would prevent deaths because there is no progressive deceleration
Remember these people don’t care about you. They wanted interns to work for almost no $$$ for them recently.
UNIONISE
Most events i heard of, where the idea came from red bull, were actually pretty bad.
The good events with red bull sponsoring come from the athletes themselves which are brought to life thanks to the money red bull puts in.
So just because it's red bull, it doesn't mean it's good.
Would be cool (or at least interesting) to see a non-UCI race series, but I think it's probably not realistic for a brand new riders union to organize all the people/money/coverage/etc to make that happen. Would have been great to have a strong union together *before* the decision to hand rights over to Discovery, so they could be involved and represented in that discussion. Better late than never though.
Or has never seen or heard of the poorer and poorer EWS presentation for viewers with f*cked up timing, no live video, lame highlights, etc and worse race fee to stages quantity for the racers, mostly one day events on a single hill, exclusion of the privateers by making EWS100 a side event with less stages while still charging the same, and so on?
Or he's been with UCI for too long already?
Else he wouldn't be so chill?
Members of the Commission shall be subject to a strict duty of reserve and confidentiality, and
refrain from any unauthorised disclosure of information brought to their attention in the
performance of their duties.
Members of the Commission shall refrain from speaking publicly about the UCI’s affairs without
prior authorisation and from any act that might reflect adversely upon their position.
Any member of the Commission having a personal interest in a matter submitted for deliberation
must leave the session before the deliberation
assets.ctfassets.net/761l7gh5x5an/1TKvJch2HRWnavBwKwFAlM/5cde1bf1edbd27da08f0af8eaf41340b/03.00k_Terms_of_reference_MTB_Commission.pdf
Currently, there are 14 voting members and if the union just replaces the two gravity athletes making 13 members/parties, or if they're just an addition making 15 members, then IMO, the union could easily be outvoted and defeats the purpose of what they are trying to achieve.
The interesting thing is this segment from Tea&Biscuits2 at 3:30min.
People complain about strikes in major sports, American Football, Hockey, Baseball. Everyone says "those guys make millions, what are they complaining about"
These guys have strikes for the little guy, so Bruni, Minnaar and company are sticking up for the riders ranked below 30, or even 60, where EVERYONE starts. They need their shot and with only 30 to qualify, that could really effect the sport. Truth is we mostly care about the top 30, but we LOVE when a guy with a triple digit plate makes it to the live feed on Redbull.
Let's hope this get's traction, 80 might have been too much, but 60 is good.
The beauty of gravity Mtb is it’s accessibility and the fact that occasionally you see unheard of privateers mixing it with the worlds top 10, unlike any other sport.
I sincerely hope that the riders can have some influence, as I do not currently have much faith in the direction we are heading, would love to be proved wrong….
Major bike bands are appartently seeing record sales/profits. They are seemingly absent from this conversation yet heavily represented in the sport. Specialized have the resources to take companies to court left and right but they apparently can’t stick up for Bruni if he’s got legitimate concerns over the safety of the course. I understand there’s separation between Specialized Corp and Specialized Factory Racing but the point is some of these bike brands are huge resources and it feels like they could be way more involved.
Sorry it’s come to feeling like the need for a union. The riders are clearly on very different pages as to what this means and while I am sure it could benefit some others will likely lose because that’s the nature of collective bargaining.
...goes on to describe exactly what a union does lol
Union = communism, bad
Association = market economy, good
I guess a $20k registration fee and 30 qualifying for races will enable riders in their twilight to prolong their careers if signed to teams.
How will the young talent emerge with $$$ or social media popularity and their brand rather than ability.
Best of three for qualifying might be a nice change, but I don't know how hard that would be on the riders.
I've really enjoyed watching the World Cup DH events on RedBull ad-free, and the same for the NBC TDF coverage. I suppose all those eyeballs not having ads for the latest Taco Bell invention is just too tempting to pass up.
Change has to start somewhere.
Yes there were things that could have been better, but the quality of the broadcast (camera coverage, commentating, pre-race, all of it) was amazing for a free stream. I'm hoping we're pleasantly surprised with Discovery but I think it's more likely they paywall it, add some commercials, cheap out on production, and slowly suck the life out of mtb coverage.
It came to a split in 2 group of riders, one supporting the efforts of the FIS, the others boycotting it.
To get a bit more background on it, you can also read this one here:
whitelines.com/longform/behind-enemy-lines-interview-fis
In my biased opinion this is the greatest sport ever, and it should be an Olympic event. A person’s skills of gravity against a track and a clock, fastest wins, nothing more pure than that.
When I started racing DH in 1994 , I was sure it was something the world and the Olympics would embrace. Much like skiing , XC ski racing and DH ski racing.
What has been holding it back from where it should be ?
It takes a lot of financial commitment to host a WC - and who is going to sign the dotted line on that one in light of the last 2 years?
I want to know what is going on as much as the next guy, but I can see how getting a WC schedule going would be a challenge…
One point nobody has mentioned; keeping the status quo isn't going to grow the sport - and bring in new sponsors, more money, etc
I'm uncomfortable with some of the things mentioned, but this move to Discovery is an opportunity to grow and develop it into a bigger sport, than it currently is. Standing still isn't an option......
The only people who want to change it are those who want to make more money out of it.
I believe they're talking about this SUPER SICK finish where you make a hard right over some rubber floor mats on the edge of a wooden drop, then pedal across a flat pedestrian bridge, then make another hard right turn down a plywood ramp into the finish area.