6 reasons to watch MTB 🚵♀️
Start getting to grips with the rough stuff
Hello lovely subscribers!
This is the first ✨proper✨ paid edition of WCW and it’s so great to have you all on board! As ever, thanks so much for your support 💘.
This week, Tilda and I are talking all things MTB because it’s 🌈 world champs week 🌈 over in Mountain Bike Land and if you’ve been following WCW (or us) for a while you’ll know that we low key love this discipline the most — and now we want to share that with you!
With the MTB world cups coming to GCN+ next year (and worlds being shown on there already this weekend) we reckon it’s a good time to initiate any die-hard roadies out there into the world of roots and rocks.
Obvs no pressure but your life will definitely be enriched (we’re not biased or anything).
Amy and Tildz x
P.s if you haven’t already then we’d love it if you gave our lil survey a look! And if you have then thanks so much!!
6 reasons to follow MTB!
Exciting racing and close competition
If you like aggressive, full-gas racing, cross-country mountain biking is the place to be. Being only 90 minutes - or 20 in the short track - every minute counts in cross-country races and the fight is usually on from the get-go. There’s no relaxed rolling through, no waiting for someone else to go first, no holding out for a bunch sprint - if you want to go, you have to go. Tactics do come into it, of course, but much of the racing comes down to riders pitting their strength, determination and skill against each other.
The fields in cross-country and downhill world cups are smaller than what you’d see on the road, but if you think this means less competition, then think again. In the cross-country races, the competition this season has been close, varied and unpredictable, with every race having a long list of potential winners on the start line. Due to the variation of courses and the degree of both skill and luck needed to win an XC race, it’s rare to see one rider dominating
In downhill, the top-level competition and the number of riders battling it out for the win is perhaps healthier than it has ever been. There’s no denying that the sport has previously been dominated by Rachel Atherton - she’s been World Champion five times, won 37 World Cup rounds and is so far the only elite rider to win every World Cup round in a season - but things look very different in her absence. For the past two seasons, the likes of Camille Balanche, Myriam Nicole, Vali Höll and more have been really closely matched, going within tiny margins of each other and making every round a really open fight.Who’s to say what things will look like if and when Atherton returns, but she’ll certainly have her work cut out for her.
Hey Siri, define ‘epic’
The characters! 🥸
Mountain bikers are COOL, ok? Although Rebecca McConnell once said to me: “we’re not the cool kind, we’re cross country” and while I agree that maybe XCO isn’t quite as ✨vibey✨ as DH, doing epic shit like riding over rocks and roots for a living makes them cooler than most of their roadie counterparts — sorry roadies, I don’t make the rules.