Mountain biking is an outdoor sport. All racers know that when the world is your venue, Mother Nature can be a decisive factor in race conditions as much as the other competitors. Still, a combination of rain, mud and untested course design left a few top riders frustrated enough to comment publicly about the World Cup season opener in South Korea.
Not all the riders were upset, of course. Some took the epic conditions in stride.
“It was pretty gnarly for sure, so much running” Haley Batten told Wyn Masters after the race for his Wyn TV post-race YouTube show. “It was good, I had fun. It was super fun in the dry but you know, bike racing’s full of surprises.”
“I’m glad I packed my running shoes,” Austrian Laura Stigger laughed, adding “It was a super nice challenge. We’ve never had something like this before.”
Canada’s Jenn Jackson finished fourth, matching her best-ever World Cup result and finishing just shy of the podium. In the immediate afterglow of the event, the Canadian national champ was focused on the positives.
“I was enjoying the descending but the hiking I could do with a … little bit less.” Jackson told Masters, adding that she does run in the off season, but that cross training tapers off as the season gets started. “The descending was impressive!” Masters added, which is always a solid tip of the hat when coming from a downhill racer.
A short while later, though, the Canadians tone was more serious.
“Let’s do better next time,” Jackson started in a post on Instagram. “The race was a disaster.”
“The amount of time spent off the bike, trudging along in the climbs was outrageous and did nothing to benefit our sport as a whole,” Jackson added, after point out the course design guaranteed any wet weather would result in just the kind of scene shown Sunday. “So much is being invested by individuals and the industry to showcase mountain biking at the UCI MTB World Series and this wasn’t a great show.”
“This wasn’t a real race,” young U.S. talent Bjorn Riley said, flatly. His Scott-SRAM teammate Andi Frischknecht tapped into the frustration of riders who spent months preparing for the event and travelling to South Korea, adding “We train the whole winter for a mountain bike race and it was just … survival.”
“That’s not mountain biking,” Sam Gaze said, adding, with a snide laugh, “But I guess it’s something different and I guess the crowd was entertained. I’m…
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