Video: Lourdes World Cup Race Day Highlights

 Exactly my wish. Make the coverage 2.5h or 3h and there is simply more time to cover more riders...

 The coverage itself felt really disjointed as well. I would've liked a couple of minutes to explain that Danny, Gee, Greg, Mick Hannah etc etc had been down earlier and an update on their injuries. Once I'd founf it out myself from the Tissot timings it was BAM here come the top 10 riders already

 Could the coverage be improved? Sure, everything could with a bigger budget/more resources. But while I'm not a big fan of Red Bull the product (can't stand the stuff), and definitely not a big fan of some of the RB hype machine, I can't shake the impression that company is run by people who are really into action sports. And over the years, they have produced some of the most amazing action sports content. Check out Red Bull Stormchase (windsurfing 'competition' involving seeking out pretty insane conditions) for an example of well produced content for a niche sport (we're a bit of a dying breed...) - not a whole lot of direct marketing impact, but holy crap, they produced an event and coverage for it.

With the World Cup - they don't even put on the events. And they are not the heaviest sponsors. Yet they produce content like mad for something they don't own or control. Good on them.

 Whether they are fans of the sport or not is irrelevant because its pure advertising, thats how they make their money. Virtually every sport whether its mainstream like Formula 1 or small time like DH world cup, redbull has some sort of on screen presence. And if they can't sponsor it directly they make a redbull team and enter the sport as competitors. Pure advertising that makes them that much money that they can afford to make these broadcasts.

 I just watched the 1994 Reebok Eliminator on Utoob. Its crazy that 20+ years ago they could get over 10 cameras up the mountain and have Heli coverage, showing the riders COMPLETE run top to bottom, and oh ya this was 21 YEARS AGO!

 Now we know what happened to george,feel sad for him,hes by far my favorite rider

 and while we are being honest............... cladiou may have funny course preview, but man he sucks at color commentating. he could barely string a sentence or thought together.............. been watching these things since peter graves set the standard.

 I feel like after reading Warners interview the other day all I could think of the entire time is how censored they must be in the booth. You can tell they were itching to let loose with some comedy, but Red Bull or whoever the boss is was keeping them to a professional standard which equals a less entertaining watch for us. I started watching these live streams just back in '13 and they were hilarious. Over time they have dulled out.

 what happened to sam hill? I didn't see his name on the results list or any coverage?

 Out for Rnd 1 with a shoulder injury....

 Stacy- Its not like he's been announcing for years, he will improve over time. You can tell that Rob was kinda leading him into making comments just to get more outta him. As somismtb pointed out, the commentary even from Rob was drastically different than from previous years and he didn't seem as all out or saying whatever pops into his head. Inexperience and what seems to be a much tighter leash on the announcers are probably both massive contributors to Claudio not being on par with his course previews.... Either that or he shot up some H before the race begun.

 Was that a procore fail or a total wheel destruction?

 Procore fail leading to total wheel destruction

 Yes?

 ehhh... this is master Miyagi: the answer for your question lies in answer for another question: "why do You want to know if procore is any good?".

Are you searching for fountain of youth? A panacea for all suffering? What price would you pay to never, ever get a flat tyre in your entire life? Or are we looking at a thin blue donut inside a mountain biking tyre that is not a tube, yet is more durable than a regular tube, inflatable separately from main tyre chamber that acts like a regular tubeless tyre?

We all have to forgive ourselves for flatting then for being so angry because we feel helpless when it happens. It is alright to be helpless, even the greatest kings and warriors feel this way sometimes.Seek and thy shall find, go young one!

 because neko mullaly/his team of mechanics don't know how to properly inflate a tire and set up suspension

 procore was never touted as indestructible and its primary purpose isn't flat protection, thats just an added benefit. Neko's a bigboy and those are some sharp rocks out there, if any race course is going to puncture a tire and the procore tube, its gonna be this one. Or maybe they're having problems with the 2 way valve and it failed here, IDK, I'll reserve judgement until it comes out.

 They had 3 procore fails in the finals and Hart had two more in practice

 eee, yes the additional part is the special valve, other than that, it is like your tried and proven inner tube. Downvote this man kids!

 I'm going to give schwalbe the benefit of the doubt, and say that the system is still really new, and even though they've done a heap of R&D (thus the price-tag) they still need developing and proving on the track, also Lourdes was pretty rugged... I still reckon they're on to something...

 that is the "grassy knoll" or hyper drive vortex

 Spirit of enduro lines.

 too bad there aren't camera's riders could mount on their head or anything so we could almost see it in their angle... welp... too bad... T_T

 There were a bunch of spectators there so here's hoping that some spectator footage trickles in...

 Members of Atheist Rational Front chased him down throwing copies of Darwin's Origin of Species at him, so he was running for his life.

 @WAKIdesigns 10/10

 There's part of it in the video, the really steep rock garden. Looks like he just found a fairly smooth line straight down the middle and went for it.

 Or maybe that was a different spot, idk

 as i mentioned in another thread..he said that he took the first split very cautiously and once he was through where he crashed he opened the taps...so i dont think it was a case of what he did different between splits 1 and 2 but rather that he was just faster than everyone else...i.e. if he was not cautious because of the crash split 1 would also have been 4 secs up

 Dh has always been pretty unpredictable due to what you listed, but i don't really see the mtb industry changing this. I kinda like how it is unpredictable, who would have predicted the podium the way it went, i don't want anybody to be injured, but it does give up n coming riders a chance when some of the big dogs are out of the race.

 ^ this person knows what's up

 I agree it needs to be unpredictable. And injuries at least stem from rider skill and decision making. But I can't believe that we are still dealing with flats in mountain biking, after all the time and money poured into the bikes.

 While I'm all for higher reliability bikes/components, in racing (not just MTB, any sport), there's a delicate balance between performance and reliability sometimes. Yes, occasionally getting knocked out of a competition is bad (especially bad if you get hurt), but always being just a little off the pace because your gear/setup choices are overly conservative sucks as well.

 Team Hutchinson UR/Polygon really needs to figure something out with their flats. Mick and Neethling both flatted at Rotorua, then Neethling flats again at Lourdes.

 @dan255 that's pretty easy to fix. Don't be sponsored by shitty kenda tires.

 I think that in a way there will always be something like flats that plagues top level riders.. after all, they push their bikes to the limits, the tyres taking a lot of impacts and pressure, hard problem to fix

 @arnoldtm2 do you have any idea what the Hutchinson brand is? Why would they be sponsored by Kenda?

 Your question contradicts itself (please don't change bikes, but change bikes). Bicycles are and should be analog. Adding more electrics and stuff will ruin the sport...

 @Dan255 Team UR/polyon dropped hutchinson as a sponser, and are now sponsered by kenda.

 Watching the finals replay, there's a specific jump on the bottom section not much more than 15 sec from the finish - it's awkward as it's a lip with a flat 40 meter section afterwards (if you guys can't pin down what I'm saying let me know, I can specify a time in the replay that shows it). It seems like basically everyone bottoms out on that flat landing, except for Gwin - he looks like he's barely using half his travel. I think you're right - looking at how his suspension was acting on this Lourdes run, it seems uncannily similar to how it acted on his crazy 2012 Val di Sole run where he won by over 7 seconds.

 I saw the same Royal28 on that section you're referring too. I believe Gwin is finally 100% healthy and possibly has finally dialed his cockpit set-up on the demo to allow him to run the mega stiff setup again.

 I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's by Beartooth, a band thats signed to Red Bull Records.. it sounds like an instrumental version of one of their songs, I can't think of which one at the moment haha

 Yup, sure did! There definitely WERE more Redbull cameras than we saw on the live feed, but they weren't broadcast (due to rider overlap, presumably). For example, the above edit shows at least two camera angles of "the wall," yet we saw NO footage of this section during the live webcast!!! What else do you have Redbull? Give it up! We want to see GWIN'S ENTIRE RUN!

 I blame Jay-Z

 ...and he didnt even use them haha… I run them too lol