Video: Jesse Melamed Tackles Wet and Wild Trails for a Brutal Practice Session at EWS Zermatt

 They are all running Maxxgrip, Ultra Soft or similar rubber, at least on the front. Should all be pretty equal in grip. Notice in the bike checks that none of them is running mud spikes, maybe because those don’t work so well on all those rocks?

 @Ttimer: A full spike never worked on rocks.
So many tyres these days have an aggressive tread pattern.
I have pretty much never ran a full spike when racing, but a cut mud king, backwards for rocks works well and is really an intermediate tyre and rolls quite fast, depends on the mud/rocks though.
A wet scream though on rocks! no way.
www.rootsandrain.com/photos/58428
The old Glencoe black, when it was first built, steep, rocky, peat, mud and heavy rain, I was still learning Dh at this time, this is the gnarliest section I have ever raced anywhere, it was relentless for some time before this too and after it.

I remember riding a pump track in the winter, it was supposed to be a quick 5 minute ride as we had the bikes, I had on Maxxis minion ST up front, he had on a Kenda bluegroove. I followed him, he was fine, I wasnt, bike just disappeared on me on a thin layer of ice and I wend down onto the rear cassette with my knee (no pads which was silly even though it was only a couple of laps we were doing), took over a year to recover as I did some nerve damage.

 These things have one main purpose: slicing up yoour tires! Secondary purpose is to check your alertness, if you are not, see purpose one.
The builders of these (hiking)-trails may have a slightly different perspective though.

 the idea is to stop the water flowing down the whole trail when it rains (erosion) and diverting into the grass.

 drainage only

 So sketchy they already shorten the day to 2 stages only, according to Matt Stuttard:

"Race Day has been made shorter due to the horrendous weather & Snow up on track. We now only have 2 Stages, but Rider Safety is key on days like this in the Mountains"

www.facebook.com/MattStuttardRacing/posts/2998195290308765:0

 Whistler

 British Columbia , whistler local

 Mars

 Didn't you learn French in school too?

 @rrolly: Yes as I am a french canadian.. haha I know Ontario had to learn a bit of french but didn't think it was everywhere in Canada! Sorry! lol

 @Timo82: My French isn't great, but I try when I can - pas besoin de s'excuser!

 No, Riffelberg. Stage 3 according to the original race plans, “Glacier Garden”.