Video: Anneke Beerten's Course Preview for the 2024 Paris Olympics XCO Test Event

 As a long-time fan, I'm just happy to see you back out there after the challenges you had with TBI, etc! Don't pay any attention to the armchair landscape engineers on PB.

 I hope it rains and we get a flatbar cyclocross race

 I think it looks ok. If the riders like it and the racing is exciting then the Olympic course doesn't have to be the best ever. I think a sport like mountain biking was always going to have to compromise to some degree to be included in the Olympics.

 actually looks like a well designed course for the wide skill range of an olympic event. long wide climb from the start to string out the field and let the elite riders get to the front. Most of the course is wide enough to pass slower riders....and a fair number of tech sections to keep the riders honest....huge step up from typical XC courses just 5 or 10 years ago. The best riders will make it look easy. And that gravel on semi slick xc tires is going to be drifty at race pace.

 This hill used to be a dump site for the city of Versailles. You clearly don't want the soil below the gravel layer to be sprayed at your face.

 Love you Anneke! Wishing you all the best and so glad to see you back out on the bike!!

 @BarryWalstead: stay mad about it bro... ya Lil bitch

 So basically this race is garbage and hazardous. A follow up toxicology exam for all riders and the venue and everyone involved is exempt from any lawsuits.

 Lots of line options and space to over take. Might be crap for a solo ride but I think it will make for a good race. Also a good use for industrial slag.

 Of course its engineered. Engineered for a French win. This could be PFP's last chance for a gold. Tokyo was too sendy and the entire podium was Swiss.

 @RonSauce: Not saying the XCO tracks need to be gnarly or force riders to send gaps or big drops, just more technical that makes them use their bike handling skills for both the climbs and the downhills.

 @RonSauce: Let cross country be real mountain biking, there's gravel racing if you want non-technical and team tactics.

 I'm all in favor of natural-terrain golf...as the Scots intended!

 @Skifastchad: what makes you think it favors more PFP or Loana Lecomte than anyone else like Puck Moonen, Alessandra Keller, Mona Mitterwallner (to name only a few)?

 @RonSauce: I'm completely at the other end of the spectrum and think the newer courses that stretch technique as much as fitness are far more enjoyable to watch and are far more the spirit of 'mountain biking'. As a racer of bikes at a MUCH lower level (CX,XC, Enduro, Crit) I think technique levels the playing field a little so that the genetically superior super athlete doesn't have it all their own way and parts of the course give others an opportunity to compete, making for better more egalitarian racing.

 @jaspersdog: technicque only makes a difference between 2 athletes in similar shape physically. Better riding skills won't give a significant enough advantage for a much slower athlete to make up for the lost time in the climbs.

 @opignonlibre: Puck Moonen?

 @bouwpakket: wrong Puck, Puck Pieterse sorry. That was a typo. The other one was Eli Iserbyt's former girlfriend and ex pro road rider right?

 What we get is gravel, while what we need is www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_6IjeprfEs

 Gravel road with wooden connecting bridges, zero roots and few boulders thrown between to be more "mtb"? Not worthy of Olympic name in title... Also mopeding course preview to promote non-moped event?

 Gravel pit! Thanks for that!

 There is some gravel yeah, but the course looks awesome! Maybe by race time dirt will replace the gravel. Anyway the course looks fantastic and. Haley the badass Batton

 .... Batten was out pacing the E-Bike. Haley is awesome :⁠-⁠)

 @onyxss: @onyxss:
>Not worthy of Olympic name in title

Well, look at London, Rio and Tokyo courses. All of them were lightly technical and very artificial. Sounds like the opposite and this one is following the olympic "tradition".


The hill used to be a dump site for the city of Versailles. You clearly don't want the soil below the gravel layer to be sprayed at your face. The gravel is here for a reason.

 @onyxss: They didn't brought this bike with the idea in mind to promote a non-moped event.

From what I understand she is skills coach for the US team. She just ride an e-bike so she isn't dropped by proper athletes like Haley Batten and can have a proper conversation with them right on the course during recon. Imagine if Batten had to wait for her all the time or she would spend her time catching her breath and couldn't speak to her. How valuable would that be as a coach work?

I am not an e-bike rider, I don't want them for my own rides but if I was a coach of a professional rider and had to ride alongside them I would definitely choose an e-bike as a work tool for these particular rides.

 @opignonlibre: Agreed - then the whole promotion of what mtb looks like through Olympics is bad - general viewer will think that MTB is some artifical gravel road happening in dump sites/quarry with some wooden bridges and boulders. Almost any other WC XCO track is better IMO than Olympics
Regarding mopeds - i'm sure they are valuable tool, but what athletes/stuff do on camera and goes public is PR these days. And mopeding XCO course is not good PR - on PB site at least

 @onyxss: She is not an athlete, she is the coach of an athlete. It is in the video description that pinkbike cited VERBATIM:
"I’m excited to be here with the USA Cycling team as skills coach!"

 Yes. Similar to the Euros course in Krakow in June..... It has to be based near Paris, so this will have to do - no different to a lot of Olympic courses.

 Hahahahhahahahaaaahhahahaaaaa!!!!!! Effing yes!

 Well those rootless natural berms are not made from gravel and have soul so that's different

 Tokyo was the anomaly (unfortunately). Rio, London, the Euro champs were also not very technically challenging. Not sure where Glasgow sits in this hierarchy ... I heard criticism, but watching it, it looked a dang site better than the ones just listed.

 Here's Puck Pieterse's course preview:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8h_BIlhMSA

 I find ebikes extremely 'meh', but here I think they found a use for it that actually makes sense. If you want to explore the course, get a feel for it, try out different lines, you'll need to do multiple laps. On the other hand you don't want to exhaust yourself too much so short before the race, so the e-assist can help with that. Still hate the sight of it, though.

 Meh, she’s earned her right to do whatever she wants . It’s a course preview. Totally ok with it

 To me it makes no sense to create a mtb course preview from to perspective of a motorbike. I'd like to see a rider negotiating the course to get an idea. Might be valuable if the coach follows the rider. Batten was faster and trying to overtake a few times anyways.

 @BurtMcBurburt: Pedal-less throttle ebike would be an electric motor cycle...

Higher torque forces than an equivalent gas motorcycle, would trench out sections of the course with one accidental brrrap.

That's the reason mountain bikers get bent about e-motos poaching mountain bike trails. That and the uphill 40mph collisions on blind corners.

 @dtheio: Here's Puck Pieterse's course preview:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8h_BIlhMSA

 Typically people recovering from a TBI can’t get their heart rate up high without feeling symptoms, so maybe that’s why she rides an e-bike. But who cares what she rides? She rips.

 Did we watch the same video? It looks hard as hell to me. It looks like an enduro track almost in some spots.
Frankly, these new skool courses have to be tv friendly and personally l am cool with that.

 Surfing is in the Olympics but I'm pretty sure it's not taking place anywhere near Paris, so it could be argued that they could have used a XC course somewhere outside of Paris. But I don't see any problem with man made/landfill courses. XC is not 'real' mountain biking anyway.

 A lot of mtb trails are man made nowadays and it's not always a bad thing. I used to love riding footpaths but some are unrideable in places without a little work and I find that the 'average' rider that tells me he is an intermediate struggles with roots, steeps, off camber etc because the local trail centres don't include those. Most trails are not really natural anymore, but that's not necessarily a bad thing

 Well that's good. You have a choice not to buy one. If I could afford one I would prefer the drone to the noise of the diesel pick up shuttling me up.

 @singletrackjamaica: Well that's good. You have a choice to buy one. If you could afford it. I don't have to worry about affording it. Or a diesel motor, for that matter – never done one. As you say, choices. So I'd say I'm ahead, which suits me just fine. But I still wonder in reality how many a time a shuttle truck passes by an emb on the way up. ; )

 Vancouver didn't even have majority-public-support for the 2030 Winter Olympics, so I can't see there being enthusiasm for the, much more expensive, Summer Olympics.

(Would be awesome to see the long-rumoured Whistler World Cup DH happen though, with hopefully an XCO round too)

 A Gravel bike would break on those rock gardens......

 Gravel... cyclo-cross... for once a Belgian may have a chance to win something...

 I agree.

 @danstonQ: pidcock: hold my beer

 Very witty, but most of all very ignorant. He was European Champion XC, was second overall in the XC WC series twice, and got bronze at the World Championships.He won a couple of shorttrack races, and marathon races too. And that's just the top results, he did many more races. Percentage wise, he doesn't have many DNF'ses at all, it's just that two of them were in big races. If you look exclusively at his mountain bike results, I'd wager he's more successful and experienced than at least half of the field.

 Ha ha! Mmm I don’t know, there’s a few off camber corners in there, and I swear I’ve seen one of those roll out ramps on the backside of a wooden drop before. That looks so familiar….

 The course got pretty good from 61 seconds on

 Mountain biking got robbed.

 You weren't looking hard enough. They are there, but they will not be there next year.