The results are in from qualifying at the first round of the 2021 World Cup in Leogang. Check out the full results below.
Elite Women
1st. Vali Höll: 4:16.824
2nd. Myriam Nicole: 4:19.058
3rd. Marine Cabirou: 4:24.794
4th. Eleonora Farina: 4:28.289
5th. Camille Balanche: 4:28.644
Elite Men
1st. Troy Brosnan: 3:34.139
2nd. Danny Hart: 3:40.873
3rd. Thibaut Daprela: 3:41.068
4th. Dakotah Norton: 3:41.397
5th. David Trummer: 3:42.318
Junior Women
1st. Sophie Gutohrle: 5:27.240
2nd. Izabela Yankova: 5:34.695
3rd. Sophie Riva: 5:36.076
4th. Ella Erickson: 5:54.389
5th. Vicky Clavel: 6:03.192
Junior Men
1st. Chris Grice: 3:49.451
2nd. Jackson Goldstone: 3:51.819
3rd. Nuno Reis: 3:54.195
4th. James Macdermid: 3:58.157
5th. Pau Menoyo Busquets: 3:58.710
That is a statement, I'd say.
Hopefully it wasn't a bad crash, but he was a DNF.
Elite mens is a 3:45 for top 20 on track today.
A 3.49.451 would be 29th, which is really good.
Gee got a 3:50
Brannigan a 3:55
Fearon a 3:56
Neko Mullaly a 3:58
Sam Blenkinsop a 4:05
So I guess the young guns did good.
Top 60 currently sat at a 3:58
Think AP did well for wrong tyres and a crash. Reece crashed too. Laurie got a red flag but finished his run and didn't do a rerun, Greg came down with a bent pedal and crank from 2nd corner.
OMG, tomorrow is going to be exciting
And ... DJ beat Rafa in the bat and ball! What a day.
Also, if you've looked at the rest of the results, the whole thing is a mess. Hartenstern beat Vergier, lol. It's only qualies, it's the first race of the (very weird) season and it's really wet... don't read too much into it.
Scroll to the bottom then click on the tabs Men, Women etc.
Haters gonna hate but this is just down to earth logic. Marketers will start spending as much cash as needed when (if one day it happens) women pick up some interest for DH mtb and racing. Otherwise they will keep on sponsoring female lifestyle influencers or female XC riders which are much more in line with the interest of women who ride.
1- That girls and young women don't have many role models within the sport and
2- They don't have a realistic career path to sponsorship and professional racing so the "pushy parent living vicariously through their athletic child" stereotype who is behind so many successful young athletes don't see it as a worthwhile thing to push their children through and choose something else that the child shows interest in.
At a recreational level, young girls and boys both love riding bikes. Bikes are sick, that's why we are all here. Supporting racers of all ages and genders helps the sport we love to grow. Looking at market segments as they are now and trying to cut the biggest slice of that existing pie is one way to do business, trying to make a bigger pie by growing into new segments is a better way.
It's a complex problem for sure. Sponsorship is just one symptom of the issue.
There's definitely a "build it and they will come" aspect to sponsorships though. If you want girls to feel welcome and pursue sponsorships and elite racing, there needs to be some level of encouragement to make it happen - at every level. It's not enough to build races if there are no girls there to race them, it's not enough to sponsor female riders.
And it definitely plays into the marketing as you said. Mountain bike marketing to women has been an abject failure for the most part. In the more recent years, we've seen a pivot in marketing to a more "this is for people who like the outdoors" REI type of marketing instead of a punk rock underground mentality that seems to resonate a little bit, but the reality is, my wife is a pretty avid biker, we go mountain biking 1-3 times a week depending on schedule, and she doesn't consume really any mountain bike media or marketing because it doesn't speak to her.
It's that fundamental problem of the bike companies hiring white men who get their audience to handle marketing, but it doesn't offer a super diverse marketing angle and so the target audience doesn't really expand. The past decade has been a large improvement, but you're kidding yourself if you think there isn't a ton more work to do on hiring a more diverse set of views to expand your reach more effectively. This isn't about a race or gender card, it's just the facts - I know how to market to a bunch of dudebros drinking beer and grilling on the bed of their pickup at the end of a day of shuttling, because I am one of them. I know what makes them tick because it's the same thing that makes me tick.
But no matter how much I try and learn about what the female riders I know like and what makes them tick, they're going to have a better idea of it than I am.
Point here being, that lack of sponsorship dollars for junior (and senior) women is one symptom of an overall problem in the bike world. There are other symptoms of course, but the reality is that to fix it, it takes a group effort. Adding sponsorship dollars to junior women isn't going to make them suddenly have the same levels of participation and competition as the men, it takes more effort than that. But not adding them? That puts up a huge hurdle.
Bike companies decided they wanted to drive the sport - they found it was profitable to step in and drive the marketing, the viewpoints, the articles, of what makes mountain biking fun. There were less articles about a bunch of idiots building some stupid shit in their back yard, or racing clunkers down a fire road, and more articles about commercialized biking - going and riding some perfectly sculpted professionally built trails at a resort. The companies stepped in with sponsorships, because getting their names out there was huge. They sponsored races. And they expanded the sport to a wider audience and made a bunch of money for it. For better or worse, mountain biking progression as a sport is commercially driven at this point, not organically driven.
And if they want to be in charge of driving, it's time for us to demand a change of direction at every level. From sponsorships to marketing to events, to grassroots support, to local female teams, diggers, and NICA development and attention. A systemic change.
Because the reality is, if you compare the number of women you see at the local trailheads, at the resorts riding downhill bikes, parking lots, and on the trails today, compared to even just 10 years ago, it's clear a massive shift has happened. The numbers of women are there to justify investing in expanding their presence and the attention they receive from a financial perspective - at this point there's no justification in saying "the money isn't there for it" because it's clear that it is.
It's time for systemic change. And the bike companies that are responsible for commercializing the mountain bike world are now responsible for making that change happen. And I think they need to let women drive that change, and not assume that women don't know how to do it.
These things don't happen overnight. I'm excited to see what's been going down in the mountain bike world on these levels, and the more events like Formation that I see, the happier I'll be. I think there's hope for the future.
But in the mean time, there's still a lot of work that needs to be done, and expanding junior women sponsorships is an important step, even if there aren't the same number of junior women competing for the spots today as there are junior men.
Duh.