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2 wheels

Bahnz

Well-known member
Despite my cynicism, I decided to give this a look, and I have to say it is hugely flawed in its current format:

1) It must be dreadful for the crowd. A 2 hour race schedule that involves 5 minutes of actual racing and in-between nothing but non-stop cheese-dick sports announcements and bad music.

2) The risk of crashes only makes things worse. I suppose this is present to some degree in all cycling events, but here it's exacerbated, as you could have 2/3rds of the field taken out by one mistake.

3) Even when crash-free, the races are a complete lottery, so to have the medals decided in one-off race means that the entire thing is essentially random, something that even the commentators freely admitted.

4) I'm not sure whether this was just due to the design of the race course, but you may as well have stopped the races after the first corner, as barring a crash the first three through almost invariably went on to claim 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

It was kinda fun, in that daft olympic sort of way though, so maybe I was too harsh on it before (totally not saying this because we won a medal :ph34r:). But the competition needs to be seriously revamped if it's to be fairer in future. Maybe change it so that the final 8 have a match play competition for the medals rather than having all 8 racers on the track at once.
 
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social

Well-known member
Despite my cynicism, I decided to give this a look, and I have to say it is hugely flawed in its current format:

1) It must be dreadful for the crowd. A 2 hour race schedule that involves 5 minutes of actual racing and in-between nothing but non-stop cheese-dick sports announcements and bad music.

2) The risk of crashes only makes things worse. I suppose this is present to some degree in all cycling events, but here it's exacerbated, as you could have 2/3rds of the field taken out by one mistake.

3) Even when crash-free, the races are a complete lottery, so to have the medals decided in one-off race means that the entire thing is essentially random, something that even the commentators freely admitted.

4) I'm not sure whether this was just due to the design of the race course, but you may as well have stopped the races after the first corner, as barring a crash the first three through almost invariably went on to claim 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

It was kinda fun, in that daft olympic sort of way though, so maybe I was too harsh on it before (totally not saying this because we won a medal :ph34r:). But the competition needs to be seriously revamped if it's to be fairer in future. Maybe change it so that the final 8 have a match play competition for the medals rather than having all 8 racers on the track at once.
Aside from the final being a lottery, I thought it was great - like Nascar compared to F1 and will bring a whole heap of new fans to cycling

Just hope that the cycling authorities dont try to replace it with something stupid like synchronised, rhythmic keiran to get the focus back on the track
 

_Ed_

Well-known member
While I agree with most of your points, I'm not totally sure about it being a lottery - the gold medallist in the women's won all her semis as well, so there's some consistency in the results.

I know **** all about this sport, but I thought Walker's strategy was really good - take it easy and cautiously in the semis, keeping plenty in reserve to ride an epic race in the final, which she did.
 

NUFAN

Y no Afghanistan flag
I thought it was awesome. Point 1 is unusual, you look at an archery competition and its probably just a couple of minutes of action in the day too. Point 2 makes the sports fun too.

I liked the format but if there was a change, perhaps instead of a matchplay situation, I would like to see the field dwindled down even 2 at a time, so it's 8 then 6 and then a race of 4 for the medals.
 

NasserFan207

Well-known member
How awesome is the mountain race?

Also the BMX stuff was great, with the exception of the finals being one race, made zero sense.
 
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