Riders are on course and practicing at Elancourt Hills, just outside Paris, for the Olympic XCO course. Despite getting a preview of the venue last fall, some riders still have some strong opinions on the track.
Tom Pidcock, reigning Olympic and world XCO champion, had rather harsh words for the venue at a press conference on Friday.
“It’s bland and I think they could have done a better job of making a more mountain bike course,” the always blunt Brit told media. “We love mountain biking for the reasons that drive us to enjoy it for what it is. That’s the courses you get to ride, the places you get to go to. When you just gravel over a nice hillside, it’s not really mountain bike.”
Pidcock is likely too young, based on his assessment of the Paris venue, to really remember what the Olympic mountain bike course looked like when his home country hosted the Games in 2012. Hadleigh Farm was almost entirely gravel punctuated by awkward, man-made features.
Adding some attempt at a silver lining, Pidcock closed with:
“It’s not the best course in the world, but its the same for everyone so…”
Dutch racer Puck Pieterse was more tactful in her assessment of the Paris XCO venue. While agreeing that it is “atypical,” Pieterse told Wielerflits that the gravel could end up being tricky.
“I think the course is great in principle. The speed is high. There are punchy climbs. The gravel makes it a bit more difficult,” the 2023 World Cup overall winner said, adding, “you have to be careful not to slip in the corners.”
A gravel corner was, infamously, what took Mathieu van der Poel out of the elite men’s world championship race in Scotland one year ago, though.
Evie Richards, speaking in the same press conference as Pidcock, struck a nice middle ground.
“I wouldn’t say it’s not hard enough. I think, just as mountain bikers, a natural course which changes with the conditions is quite a cool thing, that’s what we love to race,” Richards said of the Elancourt course, adding “But I think they’ve done the best they’ve done, being how close it is to Paris. I suppose it’s not the easiest thing to do to just pop up a mountain bike course…
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