opignonlibre

@uberwax: "Sorry, it still looks pretty boring to me. " Then don't watch it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It is just one race among many in a 4 years time span, no big deal. It won't redefine what XC is.

@Arierep: I like inner bar ends, best of both worlds and more aero on the road when you are riding to the trail.

@danprisk: "Whereas gripshift is just shit indexing, kind of like driving 90s US cars where the gears shift for you but at the wrong damn time" When was your last experience with a grip shift? I mean your description applies to cheap 25y old second hand bikes that come equipped with an old 6 or 7speed gripshift. Like the one that came on my partner's city bike. No the Sram 11speed gripshift I am using. Or you don't know how to setup a transmission.

@justanotherusername: @atrokz: From what I understand the gravel is very loose so it means the race will be technical. Just a different kind of technical than what the riders are used to. Ultimately, that course will be used once, and then for 4 years we will have the kind of courses we are used to. No big deal. Haven't seen tokyo's race but London and Rio courses weren't better.

@yoimaninja: I think they put some layers of additionnal dirt and gravel layer because the ground below is polluted. This is probably to make the dust less contaminated.

I think they hosted it there because it is hosted next to the velodrome which is the headquarter of the french cycling federation. Also they want a maximum of athletes in the Paris area. It is already complicated to manage the mess in one area of France, imagine if you have to do it country wide.

@wilsonians: Not really. 1. The olympic selection make it so that not all the best athletes will compete. For instance, Filippo Colombo, third in the WC standing, will watch the race from the television. 2. It is made so that it leaves room for nations who usually cannot compete in regular world championships for various reason. For example there is a rider from Rwanda in the start list who never competed a world cup. Completing a lap while doing all the features is already a challenge for him. My sister is a volunteer at the corner right after what look like a small drop you see in the preview video at 4:57. It looks like nothing on that video but it took 20 minutes for the rwandan rider to find a way to negociate it and one of the british female crashed in that landing in the first training. She is not following XC closely enough so she couldn't say if it was Evie Richards or Ella Maclean-Howell but in any case it was a rider used to the WC circuit. She also mentionned not being impressed by the british riders (Pidcock and Alridge), saying they looked awkward and uncomfortable on that section, as well as Puck pieterse in the first training while Vidaurre was flying. So here you are, 4 experienced WC riders seems to take that apparently small drop with a lot of caution...what do you think that means? I am not there, I can't really verify and ride the course. However something tells me that what we saw on camera do not reflect very well the reality on the ground and it is more challenging than it look. Additionnally, the riders make the race. If racer race hard, the course is harder.

I still like my sram GX grip shift better than the triggers I have on my other bike. What's wrong with it? After a 120km marathon race, you can still easily switch gears with a grip shift. The same cannot always be side with triggers under extreme fatigue.

@watchmen: making ugly bikes is in the ADN of Pinarello since the first Dogma road bike. So I guess customers would feel let down if Pinarello started making pretty bikes.

replying to myself: according to MTB data he simply failed to qualify. Sad as he has been a regular top 20 rider last year. https://mtbdata.com/riders/tuhoto-ariki-pene.