2023 World Cup Format Changes - B Practice Podcast
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ก.ค. 2024
- In December last year, Warner Bros. Discovery announced fairly monumental changes to the format of UCI World Cup downhill racing. The introduction of a third points-paying race per round that will result in less elite riders in finals quickly stirred up a commotion. On today's episode, the crew sits down to discuss the details of these changes and the possible implications they will have when the season kicks off in June. Enjoy!
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0:00 Dakotah Norton's initial reaction as a World Cup racer
4:51 Breakdown and discussion of new semi-final and finals format
9:45 Impact of the new format on US DH racers
11:38 Why did Warner Bros. Discovery implement these changes?
16:27 Broadcasting top 30 vs. top 60
17:30 Points breakdown per round
19:07 How will more points per round affect racing?
26:55 The dynamic of doing three race runs in a weekend
33:52 How to watch World Cups in 2023
36:05 Third-party media changes
39:55 New protected rider rules
50:09 The stresses of being a top 10 racer OR top 30-40 racer in semi-finals
52:10 Rumors of track standardization
53:40 Why not a B Final or last-chance qualifier?
55:05 How season-long storylines could change with less racers in finals
1:00:02 Will wildcard racers still be a thing?
1:00:14 Updates to replacement rider rules
1:02:04 2023 Schedule breakdown
1:08:04 Are all these changes just TV broadcasters taking over our sport?
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Austin Hackett-Klaube - / austinhk44
Dakotah Norton - / daknorton - กีฬา
Video contents:
0:00 Dakotah Norton's initial reaction as a World Cup racer
4:51 Breakdown and discussion of new semi-final and finals format
9:45 Impact of the new format on US DH racers
11:38 Why did Warner Bros. Discovery implement these changes?
16:27 Broadcasting top 30 vs. top 60
17:30 Points breakdown per round
19:07 How will more points per round affect racing?
26:55 The dynamic of doing three race runs in a weekend
33:52 How to watch World Cups in 2023
36:05 Third-party media changes
39:55 New protected rider rules
50:09 The stresses of being a top 10 racer OR top 30-40 racer in semi-finals
52:10 Rumors of track standardization
53:40 Why not a B Final or last-chance qualifier?
55:05 How season-long storylines could change with less racers in finals
1:00:02 Will wildcard racers still be a thing?
1:00:14 Updates to replacement rider rules
1:02:04 2023 Schedule breakdown
1:08:04 Are all these changes just TV broadcasters taking over our sport?
The biggest downside is that downhill racing is going to be locked behind a paywall. Chris Ball said he wasn't going to avoid the question on the downtime podcast and then danced around to avoid saying no there will be no free broadcast. You either pay for a cable channel in Europe, pay for Discovery+, or pay for GCN app, or you don't have access.
This might be ok for established sports, but this will hinder growth outside of core mountain bikers and limit sponsorship $
Recommend adding 1-3 more semifinal runs and rebranding it something like "Enduro".
going from 2 to 3 race runs will make a major difference, especially for smaller brands and privateers. Endurance going to be more important, and I think having 2 bikes will be essential if there's 2 runs back to back
The fastest dudes won’t have any issue. I think it raises the sport. Unfortunately everyone’s dream of racing a WC can’t be true. Look at Jackson Goldstone. You think he have 1 thought over an extra race run on a weekend?
Discovery is intentionally being misleading by stating that there are more injuries in practice than in racing. There are simply more riders and more runs during practice than there are in races. Saying that they don't expect more race runs to equal more injuries shows a basic misunderstanding of statistics. They are not lying but they are giving the numbers out of context to be misleading.
Curious if this feels the same for European DH riders
They are charging for watching, thus killing the sport for global south viewers. 😒
wal mart!! LOL great podcast, basically just corporatizing it to be "mainstream" - more profit, at what cost to the riders and culture... Let's hope that magic doesnt go away too much...
They are giving a huge advantage to top riders, in order to avoid them not racing in the finals, hence making fans angry. Doesn't seem right to me. There should be more ways to get into finals, to avoid someone like Bruni having a crash and missing it. That way it would happen extremely rarely that a top rider misses finals, without giving them preferential treatment.
"Who has two runs in them?" "Mental focus?" There are actual "real" jobs in the private sector, you know.
The interviewees mostly came off as disorganized, uninformed, and unprepared. I worry about the uci/discovery deal too but I can see why they left riders out of it. They need to get organized and have their stuff totally together if they expect to be taken seriously.
How does this format compare to, say, an F1 format?