Fix-the-Spade

@andyrm: Oops, I missed that. UCI could have done a better job of publicising that, I thought all the World Cup coverage was paywalled now.

It's never just one thing, but in no particular order. 1) The cost of taking part (entry fees, travel ETC) has gone up massively. 2) Interest (viewers, forum posts, spectators) has gone down massively. 3) High end bike sales are down, there's less budget to go around. 4) Related to 2 and 3, but 'Enduro' and the 'Enduro Bike' have changed over the last 10 years. Bikes and courses have become more downhill-like, the events are shorter, the bikes are heavier and more specialist. Early years of EWS were won by riders on machines very close to what Mr Average was buying for his average riding, now less so. 5) Mass participation no longer seems to be a thing. A lot of the early EWS rounds were the Elite field of an existing event. Mr Average (or Mr Below Average here) could enter and ride the same course on the same day, which was a lot of fun. Now it's an Elite Event for Elite Riders with UCI points only, which is bad for the sport. 6) The coverage is getting paywalled. That only works if the sport has a large quasi-religious level of following (see Football, Hockey etc). MTB in general isn't that, most MTB-ers are addicted to riding bikes, not watching others ride.

Oh no, we're already into the Lord of the Rings time of year again. Good luck to Josh, hope he's got something else lined up already.

It's just Made, it's not an acronym but somebody clearly likes to type in caps.

@edspratt: Does any footage of Kovarik's 14 second win at Fort William exist? I've only ever seen about the last 20 seconds of it.

@fabwizard: Yikes. I'll stick to jerseys.

What about 'I buy second hand gear off Ebay for pennies, because who gives a shit about 1 small hole, it'll have plenty more after summer,' seriously, it's outdoor clothing, it's supposed to get ruined.

@spaced: Depends where you're riding. Out in the US where there's gravel roads that go on for miles and miles across plains aero would definitely make a big difference. Here in Britishland it would make no difference riding along the towpaths and forest trails.

@darkstar66: It's just marketing, even in their own materials it's obviously the same carbon powder that gets added to all tyres. At least the publicity shots of pressed Graphite pucks are funny, like little piles of broken pencils. At a cost of $2000/kg for actual Graphene there's going to be phuck all of it in an actual tyre that retails for £60.

@Falcon991: Right, go it, I think. Can I get Fries with that?