- I've forgotten the next question.
- Um. - Um.
- Wait for it.
- Yeah. - Er.
- No. - Oh, I know what it is.
Now, I'm heading into the pits of Fort William World Cup,
to ask, are downhill tracks in World Cup level
getting too easy?
Is it just too simple, lads?
- I think it's a --
complaining that it's getting too easy,
I don't think it is,
do you see the amount of injuries they've had?
I mean, everyone's just racing hard, the bikes are good.
So, they're not too easy,
it's just as hard as they ever were.
They are tricky, they're just riding faster, yeah.
- Steve?
- I think they're getting easier, yeah.
- That's why you stopped, wasn't it?
- The tracks are actually are actually easier to ride,
the riders are still going really fast,
and they're training up and, yeah,
it's not easier as, like, the competition,
and riding against each other,
but the tracks are actually easier.
They don't have any off-camber turns up there anymore,
there's no stuff where you've got to set up
and get round a tree, round some tree roots,
or something like that.
They just fill them all in and put berms in.
- This guy wants to turn it into trials.
Too much Scottish Six days for you.
- That's what we used to do.
Now it's too easy.
- I could see why people would say that, in some ways, yes.
I think easy is the wrong word,
I think more man-made and more, you know.
But the thing is, is it makes it so much faster for us,
and I think it's almost more dangerous in some ways.
I like a lot more of a natural track,
but then, I grew up in Morzine, so, you know,
I love built-up berms and big jumps.
A mixture of both is good, but I would say,
it's alright at the moment.
(laughs)
The bikes are getting too good, I'd say.
That's probably what it is.
Aye, I think they're a lot more technical
than they used to be, in terms of some aspects,
but I think the bikes are getting that good at the minute
they're becoming too easy for the bikes.
- Yes, I would say, the only one --
- At last, someone says yes!
- The only one, like Croatia, that was difficult.
You had to ride that like a Supercross,
you had to get the rhythm right,
you had to hit your lines perfectly,
otherwise it was game over, that kind of thing.
So, yeah, I think, but a lot of them,
the bike park ones, I think they're too easy,
too manicured, it's not natural.
- Is this one of those bike park ones?
- Probably, yeah.
- And yeah, there's the issue with the bike park situations,
you know, bike parks are getting bigger,
so now it's less fresh woods to use,
and more environment people getting involved.
In the bike parks there's more restriction,
so more bike park, less free stuff,
and more restriction with environments,
it's getting hard to go back to the old natural courses.
- But do we need to go back?
Maybe it's good to freshen up and have, like,
get faster and faster tracks, maybe that's a good thing.
- Well, there's a limit, you know?
There's some venues that it's been way too much bike park,
and we are reducing it, and getting it better.
So, it's just a mix, a mix is good, you know?
But, the old stuff, in my opinion,
I come from, a bit, the old school,
late 90s and early 2000s, and I like the natural forest,
minimum berms, and, you know, I like, nasty things.
But, you know, the new generation's a bit different,
you know, they grew up on bike parks,
so they are used to different stuff, as well.
- Yeah.
Yeah, 'cause, well, this is why I say this,
it's like, now you're just like, going so fast,
that when they're a bit harder,
you get to go a little bit slower, so I like that.
(laughs)
- Was Croatia hard enough?
- Yeah Croatia was hard, but you're like nibbling down, so.
Yeah, I'd like it to be way more technical,
and then you can play around with a bit more time, yeah.
I like a bit more spread, you don't want, like,
twenty guys on one second, because then, yeah,
like Leogang's the hardest one to race,
because everyone, you make one mistake,
and you're just thinking you've lost 50 places.
- Are World Cup downhill tracks getting too easy?
- Well, yeah, it's funny you should say that,
because last night, I was thinking about this track here,
Fort William, and I was thinking, a couple of years ago,
it was actually way harder,
because the new section they've put in from the deer gate,
that gives you a bit of a break,
it's pretty smooth right now,
the old section is absolutely wrecked,
like, bedrock, rocks everywhere, so gnarly,
and then you used to drop into the woods,
and the woods was way harder than it is now,
it used to be, I was thinking last night,
"How did we even ride that?"
You know?
And now, I'm thinking, "Thank goodness," you know.
It's a lot easier, it is,
I think they're getting more high speed and faster,
but, you know, I used to--
at Schladming, you know, it would be raining in the night,
before the race, and I woke up,
and my stomach would just drop, and I'd think,
"Oh my god, I'm not even going to be able
"to get down the track," you know?
So, I think they're getting, like, easier on the whole,
for sure, but, maybe yeah, it's good.
(laughs)
- Good answer.
- I still crash, so they can't be that easy.
- I personally enjoy the fact of we are mountain bikers,
whereas we have to, like, interpret the terrain,
and it's constant change,
which is where I started and a lot of the guys started.
The track's changing every run,
we've got dirt, we've got roots coming out,
we've got turns that are getting blown out,
this that and the other,
you always have to change your lines up.
Now I feel it is bike parky,
we are fighting on the same line,
we have to ride down the same meter of track
week in, week out, which has changed,
basically the sport's changed.
It's no longer like outdoor motocross,
where we used to, like, cut spikes on every other weekend,
and rip down new fresh dirt, we're hardening suspension up,
we're lengthening the bikes
to make it stable at high speeds.
It's different, you know?
It's not necessarily better or worse,
but I think it's becoming less mountain biking.
- Like you said it, I think the sport's got faster,
tracks easier, but the bikes are better, yeah that's right,
I wouldn't have said Val di Sole was easy, is it?
No, I mean, even Val di Sole, which is horrific,
it's still fast, do you know what I mean?
Like, everyone's so good and the bikes are so good,
but, as Eddie hates times being tight,
that's what I fucking love.
Give me a Leogang, mate,
televised almost from to the bottom,
the top ten separated by about .11 of a second,
that's what we're looking for.
- Jennifer will win by, like, five or six seconds,
so that's all good, yeah.
Even if it's, like, .5 I'm happy.
(laughs)
- Certainly not from me, yeah, I mean, these kids,
the talent right now with these young kids coming up,
is incredible, the juniors right now are just flying.
I think that, wow, that's a tough one,
the talent is just getting so great.
Maybe something to think about but I can't say that,
no, these courses are really tough,
these kids are just, their abilities are amazing.
We can't forget that.
- You could say that.
- Yeah? - Yeah, for sure.
The likes of Leogang, that's pretty bike parky,
and it's more of, like, whoever can go fastest.
I mean, it's easy to make mistakes on that sort of stuff,
because you're, obviously, trying to go as fast as possible,
but I mean, like, the likes of Andorra, Val di Sole,
they're the real tracks, and I think we need more,
more tracks like that, for sure.
- Are World Cup downhill tracks becoming too easy?
- From my point of view, never having ridden
a World Cup downhill track,
I think they just keep getting more and more ridiculous.
- That's what I think.
- Yeah, exactly, you know, when you look at Losinj,
what they were going down there, that's brutal.
You know, it's a different challenge here,
it's longer, it's continuous, it's harder, you know,
they get to the bottom and they're absolutely beaten up.
And I think that's the best thing about World Cup,
having different types of courses,
so you've got a big long grueling challenge here,
and then short venues elsewhere, steeper, more techincal,
Val di Sole, whatever, you know,
that's the whole beauty of having a World Cup series,
is having different events,
so they're not all sanitized, the same thing each time.
- Well, middle ground, I think.
Some people thought the tracks are too easy,
others thought the speed was good,
I don't know, looking at these tracks myself,
it doesn't look easy here at Fort William at all,
the track looks treacherous.
Let me know what you think
in the comments section down below,
are World Cup tracks getting too easy?
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