Tom Pidcock, the reigning cross-country Olympic mountain bike champion, has stated the course for his title defence in Paris is “bland” and “simply gravel”.
The 24-year-old frolicked finishing a recon of the course in Élancourt Hill, 25 miles west of Paris, on Wednesday. The location counts the very best level within the Paris area, at 231m, and consists of artifical gravel switchbacks.
Talking in a press convention on Friday morning, Pidcock stated the Paris Olympic Video games course is “not likely mountain bike”.
“It is bland and I feel they may have achieved a greater job of constructing a extra mountain bike course,” he stated. “It is not the very best course on the earth, however its the identical for everybody so…
“We love mountain biking for the explanations that drive us to take pleasure in it for what it’s. That is the programs you get to experience, the locations you get to go to. Whenever you simply gravel over a pleasant hillside, it is not likely mountain bike.”
Pidcock’s views have been typically shared by his Crew GB teammate, Evie Richards, who will compete within the girls’s occasion on Sunday, the day earlier than the lads’s race.
“I would not say it isn’t onerous sufficient. I feel, simply as mountain bikers, a pure course which adjustments with the circumstances is kind of a cool factor, that is what we like to race,” stated Richards, who completed seventh in Tokyo. “However I feel they’ve achieved the very best they’ve achieved, being how shut it’s to Paris. I suppose it isn’t the best factor to do to simply pop up a mountain bike course anyplace.
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“If I used to be the designer I might have it extra pure, with much more pure options, reasonably than man-made. However I feel we usually see that at Olympic Video games. It is usually a little bit of a distinct course from what we might race at World Cups, however I feel that is simply because once we race World Cups, we’re usually within the Alps someplace, someplace in a pleasant ski resort. That is tremendous near town centre.”
Each athletes anticipate the simple course to make for extra easy racing. “There’s additionally not a lot considering to enter it,” Pidcock defined. “It’s form of one [racing] line, you simply go down there.”
Richards stated the course is “simpler to be taught”, with “much less decisions” to be made when racing. “I suppose, technically, you continue to need to be good, since you nonetheless need to experience on gravel,” she stated.
The course for the cross-country mountain bike occasions is 4.4km lengthy, with 110m elevation achieve per lap. The variety of laps will probably be agreed by the group managers the day earlier than the competitors, in an effort to attain a race time of between one hour and 20 minutes and one hour and 40 minutes for each the women and men.
The ladies’s race will happen at 13:10 (BST) on Sunday 28 July, with the lads’s race on the identical time on Monday 28 July.
