A Closer Look at Stage 2's Cancellation at EWS Tweed Valley

There are plenty of talking points to come out of this EWS opening weekend - Innes Graham, wow! And what a battle between Ella Conolly and Bex Baraona! And Jesse Melamed gave Richie Rude a serious run for his money! The future is so damn bright with these riders. But unfortunately one of the biggest storylines of the race came from the cancellation of Stage 2.

Kasper Woolley had a significant crash on Stage 2 that caused a long course hold. He's injured but out of the hospital, and we wish him a speedy recovery.

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After about an hour of stalemate, the EWS provided an update that Stage 2 had been canceled for the entire Elite Men category. (All the other categories had already completed the stage.) While the majority of the men did race the stage before the course hold, the remaining riders proceeded directly to Stage 3, rather than racing Stage 2 and climbing back up to the start of the next stage, reportedly causing some riders to complain that the day wasn't equal for everyone. The riders who missed out on a race stage and the subsequent climb were the top riders on the start list: Jose Borges (who was in the start gate and two seconds from starting his run when the course was flagged), Kevin Miquel, Jack Moir, Martin Maes, Richie Rude, Sam Dale, Jesse Melamed, and Innes Graham.

What does skipping that stage mean, exactly?

The entire race covered 42.5 km (26.4 mi), 9.6 km (5.9 mi) of that within the timed stages, with a total of 1,797 m (5,895 ft) of climbing. Stage 2 represented 1.0 km (0.6 mi) with 185 m (606 ft) of descent with another 4.2 km (2.6 mi) and 230 m (755 ft) to transfer back up to Stage 3. In the context of the race, that's not huge, but even one enduro stage is a significant, often redline effort. Plus, the riders who skipped Stage 2 climbed about 10% less than the riders who rode the full race, with an easy, mostly downhill cruise from the top of Stage 2 to the start of Stage 3, compared to those who finished in a hole at the bottom of Stage 2.

Did skipping the physical effort of Stage 2 actually help any riders place higher?

We can't say for sure, obviously, since we're just looking at what if alternate reality scenarios, but here are a few notable lines on the results sheet.

Dan Booker and Elliott Heap are the highest-placed riders who raced the full course and finished 5th and 6th overall, respectively. Both were quite consistent throughout the race, so it's unlikely that they would have made up the respective six and seven seconds to catch Martin Maes in 4th place, but it's not outside the realm of possibility, had either of them had just a bit of extra energy. Over six stages, that's about a second per stage, or 1.5 seconds for each of the four stages that remained after Stage 2. That's about 0.7% on a 3.5-minute track, an amount that could possibly, but not definitively, be affected by fatigue. (Keep in mind that these are top racers who train specifically to be able to tackle tough stage after tough stage. Also, in the context of such tight racing, 0.7% is a significant difference.)

Just below Sam Dale in 7th, who did not race Stage 2, were Ed Masters, Antoine Vidal, Cole Lucas, and Rhys Verner, all about six to seven seconds back from Dale. Same story here to the Maes / Booker / Heap cluster - there's a slight chance that the difference in stages raced had an effect.


Moving down the results a bit, one close group of riders may well have been affected by the course change. Kevin Miquel finished 16th and did not race Stage 2. 0.23 back from Miquel is Youn Deniaud, and another 0.20 back from Deniaud is Adam Brayton. Had Deniaud and Brayton not raced an extra stage compared to Miquel, there's a chance either or both riders could have gained that less-than-half-second edge over Miquel to finish 16th, rather than 17th or 18th.

Perhaps the most significant shuffling could have happened even farther down the results. When the dust had settled, Jack Moir had landed himself in 26th, with a group of 13 riders hot on his heels within five seconds - all of whom had raced Stage 2. Sure, into the 20s and 30s it doesn't seem to matter as much to split hairs between who placed 26th and who placed 29th, and five seconds certainly isn't nothing, but the cluster extends all the way to Vid Persak in 39th, and we can imagine that Persak (and the 12 others between him and Moir) would have chosen to have raced one fewer stage while trying to make up that time on Moir. Mark Scott finished less than a second off Moir's total time, with one more stage in his legs.

Who else was affected?

Since riders dropped at 30-second intervals, and Kasper's injury happened at the bottom of the stage, five riders were on course when the stage was flagged: Slawomir Lukasik, Matt Walker, Adrien Dailly, Zakarias Johansen, and Dimitri Tordo. Those riders still had to put in the physical effort of the race stage plus the subsequent climb out so they certainly didn't save any energy compared to the riders who didn't race, and they were slowed down significantly by the course blockage. (As they should have been. Stopping to check on an injured rider is immeasurably more important than putting down a fast race time.) With no re-runs available, their races would have been fully sabotaged had Stage 2 not been canceled.

It's worth noting that some of those riders - especially Lukasik, who finished 15th - were able to continue pushing hard throughout the race without letting the Stage 2 interruption affect the rest of the day.


Was there another option on the part of the EWS?

It's tough to say. The logistics of running an EWS race are mind-bending at best. It's unlikely they could they have made those top riders do an extra liaison without destroying their schedule, and even that wouldn't have accounted for the effort during the stage. Could there be a better protocol that ensures racing continues safely and quickly in the event of a serious injury on a stage? Possibly, but that raises a whole host of other questions, both ethical and practical.

Was it fair?

Not exactly, but racing is rarely - if ever - fair. Competitions try to level the playing field as much as possible, but riders always benefit from their own advantages and face down their own disadvantages, whether we're talking about torrential rain for the last riders down a course, asymmetric enforcement of rules, or even simply the vast differences in the levels of support riders receive at races. Sometimes it all just comes down to just dumb luck or lack thereof, and all anyone can do is wait for the winds of fortune to blow back the other direction.