Rudy2455

It's so difficult for me to respond to this comment nicely. Cam and Kyle live and breathe this event, it clearly means the world to them. And they continue to ride at the gnarliest level, you cannot deny they still earn their entries. But you're going to trivialize their accomplishments and demand they're thrown out because 'new blood' would be more entertaining for you? When the riders have genuine complaints about Rampage it's always because the production and event teams prioritize the 'show' over rider safety, rider concerns or just what makes for the best riding. YOU are this problem.

I think you’re spot on that it’s a legitimate concern but a failure of poor planning. All medics in the steep and muddy sections of Leogang had crampons on their boots. Spectators slipped and slid but the medics could practically run up and down. I’d really like to hear Ben and others weigh in on the third option- reverting back to the schedule used in previous years to race all juniors and all qualified elites in one day. I would love to hear from someone present- what would have been too challenging about this option?

@elbandido77: As the broadcaster, Red Bull had a lot of say in what was going to make a good ‘show.’ This is where a lot of the complaints about hyper-fast bikepark tracks came from- RB wanted high speed racing with tight results to make for a good show, and bikeparks tend to provide the infrastructure needed to support the whole circus. The success of the show then becomes a metric to judge the health of the sport, and have contributed to decisions in the past like reducing male qualifiers from 80 to 60. All broadcast events are formatted around things like commercial breaks and broadcast windows… so RB and WBD might not have official rule making control the way UCI does, but their ability to influence the race format puts a lot of de facto control in their hands. I hope that makes sense.

@optimumnotmaximum: he was downvoted for being an idiot. Elite women race the same day as Elite men, while Junior men and women race the day before. The Juniors were canceled because of the weather on their race day, not their skill level. The real stitch up, as far as I’m concerned, is that they’re so rigidly stuck on the idea of Elite semifinals that they couldn’t move every race to Sunday- if conditions truly were that bad, which according to Wyn, they may not have been.

There's nothing better than footage from 1994 and nothing worse than footage pretending to be from 1994. Why?

Wow, awesome video and riding! Chili looks like an incredible place to ride!

@Curator88: I'm sorry but, this comment is so incorrect. First, there's no way to 'water down' a competition to cater to spectators. If you want a spectator-oriented slopestyle event, you want a show like Masters of Dirt. A competition is about being the best, even if it goes over the heads of the common spectator. BMX has in no way cracked this problem, and nothing you've listed would end Emil's domination. Within freestyle BMX the same disconnect between what spectators liked watching and what judges value highly definitely exists. For example, during the Olympics many people felt like bronze medalist Daniel Dhers deserved a higher score. Similarly, the same problem is all over freeride events like Rampage, where fluidity and speed also exist as judging criteria. I think the real problem is just that common spectators don't have the skill to be judges, and so can't judge for themselves what a good run is. I would even say you can see this play out when you watch women's BMX. In women's freestyle BMX, where the skill level is lower, it's much easier for spectators to understand these judging decisions and so there's less controversy. It's easy for us all to understand when one competitor does a backflip and the other does not, or one does a double tail whip and the other does a single. Ultimately, yes, it's frustrating when the run you liked best doesn't score the highest. But this clearly exists in BMX and Freeride, and I think it's just the price of progress. To say it's damaging all these sports to the point they need to change is incorrect. And finally, it is absurd to suggest that opposite tricks should not be worth more, or that an opposite trick is 'the same trick' as a regular one. Ask anyone in these sports and they will tell you about huge struggles to learn opposite tricks. Many people will tell you that learning an opposite trick can be more difficult than learning it regular was. We can't discard that reality just because one person has gotten so good at oppo tricks. I'm honestly not on the Emil hype train. I'd love to see a rotating cast of winners. And I would love to continue to see changes to slopestyle courses to make them more dynamic and challenging to the athletes. I think innovative courses are a key to maintaining spectator interest and sustaining the sport. But changing the structure of the sport just to make it harder for one guy to win is reductive and harmful. This line of thinking is like saying since women's downhill racing was boring when Rachel Atherton won every race, because Rachel was so good racing with both arms, we need to change downhill so that everyone races with one arm behind their backs so it can be more fair and exciting to spectators.

@succulentsausage: That's true, mountain biking isn't the only sport taken over by it. And in a way, I am grateful. It gives a lot of power to athletes to share their stories with their own voice, instead of filtering it through event managers or sponsors. But it's very formulaic, and doesn't appeal to me, personally.

Maybe I don't want to kick puppies, but yeah. The youtuber vlogginess of our sport is really in your face with this one.

@fektor-b: I think Fort William has been held before from wind at the top, no?