Hey everyone, just a heads up that Mt. biking XC will be on tv this weekend. Women's race is Friday and the Men's is on Saturday.

I watched the BMX last night and it was very cool.

Thanks for the heads up. I watched BMX too....super fast and furious.

Yeah, I am looking forward to seeing our sport get some attention. I wished downhilling was an olympic event to.

Not sure but heard the Olympic MTB events are being postponed for rain... Seems to be a trend that promotes the environmental challenges for trail use.

so lets hear it locally: Is postponing the event at Beijing a good or bad idea?? zzzing..

I personally compete better when it is a muddy mess, however some venues are quite sustainable even in a downpour, others well not so much.

Better to postpone than letting it become the poster child for why mountain bikes shouldn't be on trails.

The venue does matter and the time of year.

I think just the women's race has been postponed until Saturday.  The men are still on schedule as far as I know.

The host country could care less about any environmental damage; they are only concerned with the appearance, and with public opinion. Actually, not so much with public opinion, just for the appearance. If their riders were good mudders (like Gene), the race would've went off in the rain this morning.

Does it have bail out routes?

 

Conyers did'nt look too tough on tv, but it was. Paula Pezzo went down hard in a major rock garden during the womens race. I'm not sure that anyone on this site could've recovered. She got back on her bike (blood streaming) and crushed the field. She might've have been a model, but she was also the real deal as a athlete. I hope that someday I can make it to another Olympics somewhere.

what time they on this weekend? channel? My guide doesn't say anything about mtb..... i could just be dumb too, who knows...

Looks like it is only online.  The listing only list online times.  It is on right now.

speaking of the olympics, did anyone see the cuban taekwando dude kick the ref for DQing him? AWESOME! and he's apparently banned for life. ha.

That's hilarious.

I watched some of the men's MTB. Good thing they didn't run it the other day after/during the rain. Quite a few portions were straight up and down the hillsides. Not very 'sustainable' for extended use. Some of the rocky/rooty descents were really neat looking.

You can watch the whole mtb venue online. It was very cool.

Why is it that American XC riders suck?

 They do most of their training on the road, and expect the courses to  "flow" like the road they train on. 

Next Olympics the American men should actually try to finish the race...

the course looked easy technical wise, but those switch backs up that hill looked killer.  The course was so wide!

It looked like a great race course to me.  Those switchbacks were pretty intimidating and that one section where the trail dropped down that rut provided a few entertaining crashes.

I found it interesting that most of the men were riding hardtails (as far as I could tell).  I guess they were more suitable for the course.  More of the women seemed to ride FS.  There were some very nice bikes out there (check out Absalon's ride HERE).