Forget Crit Beef, Let's Talk Ramp Beef

The Sakura Drop Steals The Show At The Olympics MTB Events

There’s an old Late Night clip in which Conan is interviewing Courtney Thorne-Smith. You may have seen it because it gets a lot of play for Norm MacDonald’s interruptions during the segment and his “Chairman of the Bored” line. But I want to focus on the non-Norm bits because I think Conan makes an analogy that works well in light of the Olympic MTB races we watched over the past few days. The clip is here if you want to see the whole thing. I want to focus on this part:

CONAN: You are making a movie with Carrot Top.

COURTNEY THORNE-SMITH: I MADE a movie with Carrot Top.

CONAN: He works with a lot of props and stuff, right?

CTS: Not in the movie.

CONAN: In the movie they took his props away?

CTS: They took his props away.

CONAN: That’s a bad time to suddenly take away everything you know about comedy. You know? You’ve been using props all your life for comedy, and now we’re going to take them away when you make your first movie?

You can probably see where I’m going with this. Mathieu van der Poel showed up in Tokyo and dialed in the course with the understanding that the ramp placed at the exit of the Sakura Drop rock feature would be in place during the race. As you’ve probably heard by now, much to his surprise, and mid-air-realization, the ramp was no longer in place during the actual race. That ramp was MvdP’s prop, and much like Carrot Top, he needed it to succeed. Case in point: Chairman of the Board received a 13% ranking on the Tomatometer, and MvdP received an Olympics DNF.

Clip via @hane0505 on Twitter.

In the days that have followed the race and Tom Pidcock’s mastery of the Tokyo track, much has been said about the ramp and who knew what when. The focus on the feature intensified when it reappeared during the women’s event and even played a part in another controversial moment between Jolanda Neff and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot.

Following the men’s race, MvdP went to Instagram to make his case that the ramp's removal was unexpected.

There is no reason to insinuate that MvdP is manufacturing this storyline. You can clearly see in the clip above that he rolled over the rock with the full expectation that he would land on a ramp. However, his teammate and coach told the press he was reminded several times the ramp would be removed. A message that, for whatever reason, did not register with Mathieu.

Dutch national MTB coach Gerben de Knegt (who, for those scoring at home, was Dutch National CX Champ in 2002 and 2006) was pretty tough on the Dutch superstar, intimating that real mountain bikers would’ve known the ramp wasn’t going to be there for the race. But after a day of reflection, he told Wielerflits that van der Poel doesn’t always retain race information, and he could’ve done a better job making sure the rider knew the ramp would be removed.

The outcome of the evaluation was that it was not clear to Van der Poel that the ramp would no longer be there. “You can ask yourself: could we have emphasized it even better? That truth is somewhat in the middle. Mathieu is of course a very special rider”, laughs De Knegt now. “He does his own thing, sometimes forgets something and you have to repeat some things to him. You have so many things to think about with him. But he is worth it. He's definitely a really good one and to him this just sucks. I can't say much more about it either. In summary, it's just a shitty story, that's it." [Please excuse the Google translation. But you get the gist. Original Dutch language version is here.]

In the Twittersphere, there was a lot of chatter about how the organizers could get away with removing the ramp without telling anyone. Or if removing a safety ramp from a feature on race day was a normal procedure in cross country competitions. Those are the questions I wanted to try and clear up in this space.

Let’s tackle the first question: was MvdP the only one who didn’t know that the organizers would remove the ramp? The answer is clearly, yes. Nobody else got the feature wrong, and nobody else complained about the removal.

I chatted with Simon Burney, UCI Off-Road Racing Manager, about the ramp, and he was able to clear up a few misconceptions. First off, the procedure for the Sakura Drop was to include the ramp for the first two days of practice to allow riders to dial in their lines and become comfortable with the obstacle with a safety feature in place. Then, on the third day of practice and for the race, the practice ramp was removed. This was the same procedure followed at the Olympics test event in 2019. In the photo below, you can see the ramp placed at the side of the feature on the third day of practice at the 2019 test event, so riders approaching the feature knew it had been removed.

During the team manager’s meeting held before the men’s Olympic race, a slide was shown to attendees, clearly showing the Sakura safety ramp would be removed for the race. It is the responsibility of the teams’ managers to share this information with the athletes. The bottom line, removing the ramp for race day should not have been a surprise to anyone.

As for the second question, modifications like this happen at every World Cup race and are not out of place at the Olympics. It is in the managers’ meeting that this information is communicated. Having worked with several world cup teams in years past, I’ve had the opportunity to see the communication process in practice. On most teams, after the meeting is completed, each team manager will send an email or a text to athletes informing them of the lap count for the race, if there will be a start loop, notes on feed zones, and any modifications made to the track for the race that were not in place during practice sessions. What happened in Tokyo is in line with every other World Cup-level mountain bike event.

The consternation over removing the ramp for the men’s race heated up the next day when it was back in place for the women’s race. The knee-jerk reaction was that its reappearance was a response to the van der Poel incident. But, according to Burney, this was far from the truth.

“The ramp went back in purely because of the weather. When we had to make the decision (before training started), it was torrential, and the jump's landing was really slippery. The hour before the race start, the rain stopped and stuff was drying quickly,” Burney said. “It only went back in because it was biblical rain right before training started, and the women had to check the changes.” Stressing this was a weather rather than sex-based decision, Burney said that “if it hadn’t rained, the ramp would’ve stayed out. The women were jumping it no problem at all.”

Jolanda Neff demonstrates how no ramp is needed for the women as she cleans the Sakura Drop in 2019 at the test event, a race she also won.

To further show that the addition of the ramp for the women’s race was a weather-related decision, here is a communique sent to team managers on the morning of the event outlining the changes in effect due to the heavy rains. Bullet point three notes the installation of the training ramp on the Sakura Drop.

It’s clear that the ramp was reinstalled in the name of safety. However, an argument can be made that its inclusion may have made the race a bit less safe for the leaders. Without the ramp in place, the feature has one speed: sendin’ it speed. You can’t slow-roll the feature and expect to clean it. Without the safety ramp in place, everyone can accurately gauge the rider's pace ahead of them and have a predictable trip over the obstacle. With the addition of the ramp, the variability in speed increases dramatically. Some riders could take it easy and roll the ramp, while others may choose to go full send. In the chaos of the first lap, it’s hard to know who is doing what.

And this brings us to the latest episode of MTB Frenemies, the Jolanda Neff and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot edition. It’s an understatement to say that these two have some history. In just the last handful of years, there was the thrilling last-lap battle and sprint finish at the 2019 Val Di Sole XCO World Cup. But there was also the ugly crash between the two at the Hoogerheide Cyclocross World Cup in 2018 that left both riders injured. It was most likely this incident that had Neff riled up after her gold medal performance two days ago.

On the Sakura Drop, which I’ve been blathering on about for the past 1000 words or so, PFP led Neff on lap one. Coming from behind, Neff came into the feature full-on with the assumption that PFP would do the same. This was not the case. PFP slowed up dramatically, causing Neff to change course mid-flight and forced her to pull off a miraculous save.

Gripe all you want about how many extra grams a dropper post adds to your rig, weight weenies, but in this case, it allowed Jolanda to extend as far back off her bike as possible to keep upright and save her race.

If PFP brake-checked Neff on purpose is something we will never know. Personally, I don’t think she did. But that didn’t stop Neff from calling it a “stupid move.”

“She was in front of me and we were going at a good decent speed and then she pulled her brakes super hard and I couldn’t do anything,” Neff said in a post-race interview. Neff added that it was too late to brake and she ended up jumping with no speed at all. “It’s not the first time she does something like that, and I’m just glad I wasn’t near her anymore.” Again, see that Hoogerheide clip above.

It didn’t take Neff long to separate herself from PFP. Seconds after the near-crash, she made sure to stay clear of PFP on the next feature, and the decision to do so was a race-winning one.

A few things to point out here. First, you needed to bring enough momentum into this rock feature to ensure that pedaling was at a minimum. As soon as Ferrand-Prevot tried to put power into the pedals, her rear wheel slipped on the still wet rocks. Second, Neff was all in on making the pass here. Once she was clear of the field, she always took the inside line on this feature. She only took the high line on this lap to make the pass. Finally, the momentum Neff carried in later laps is a thing of beauty. Pumping with her arms through the rhythm section and not even pedaling until she’s cleared the feature. Seriously, count the pedal strokes. If it’s higher than zero, try again.

To wrap things up, I will move away from the drop and talk about Pidcock for a quick second. Since this is first and foremost a cyclocross site, I wanted to highlight one of my favorite moments of the MTB events—Tom Pidcock passing the Swiss riders on an off-camber. It’s not a flashy feature or even that exciting, but it was the type of move you expect from a cyclocross racer. Nobody was riding the low line on this section, but Pidcock did. It looked like something straight out of Namur, and seeing it warmed my field racing heart.

Until we chat again, hang in there, cyclocross friends.