Video: Designing the Course for the Enduro World Cup in Finale Ligure with Race Director Francesco Gozio
Francesco Gozio has lived in the Finale Outdoor Region just short of a decade. He knows the vast network of trails like the back of his hand and is able to stitch tracks together for Enduro, E-Enduro, and Marathon courses that challenge the best riders in the world.
Playing host to Enduro and E-Enduro World Cups is no small feat – from course ideation and planning many months in advance to organizing all the people and every detail needed for each event to go off without a hitch.
Finale is rich with MTB history and is arguably one of the most iconic stops on the EDR calendar each year. But it takes the expertise of locals like Gozio to make it all happen.
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I feel such an aggressive push from the emtb industry though. At first it was all about accepting these bikes as the same. "It's just pedal assist" they said. Now we hear non ebike races may not have much of a future at the elite level. Now courses are literally being catered towards or redesigned for ebikes to the point that you would have a severe disadvantage without an ebike. What exactly is the point of developing ebikes and then redesigning courses to negate the advantage of an ebike besides an attempt to phase out regular bikes and force elite racers to jump on the bandwagon and help sell more ebikes?
We don't have separate races for single speed or age. Why not be more inclusive and just allow folks to register under an ebike class/category and be more inclusive of both types of bikes. It doesn't have to be an E event. There can and have been several different podiums for type of bike, age, gender etc. but now ebikes come along and its just an ebike event.
Not here to rag on ebikes, they are cool. But it's funny we went from "accept us" to if you don't own an ebike, go f*ck yourself.
Thankfully, at least in the US, there are a lot of grassroots orgs still hosting non ebike enduro events and the number is growing.
That said I still loving Finale, 2X/year if possible.
You should be fine booking your accomodation around your budget/preferences