How Vlad Dascalu's 17th Place at Nove Mesto Earned Tom Pidcock An Olympic MTB Spot

After Tom Pidcock’s standout performance last weekend, in which he started near the back of the grid and finished in the top 10, two storylines emerged: (1) with a more advantageous starting position, could Pidcock win the Nove Mesto World Cup; and (2) how was it possible that the arguably fastest MTB racer was not going to the Olympics?

Pidcock answered storyline number one loudly and clearly by earning a front-row start position by just getting pipped at the line by Mathieu van der Poel in the short track, and followed that up with a mindblowing XCO victory in which he put more than one minute into the same Van der Poel and the rest of the men’s field.

As spectacular as that win was, it did not secure an Olympic spot for Pidcock because Great Britain had not earned a qualifying spot. They were out of the top 21 nations who get a spot, and their riders did not perform well enough at qualifying championship events to earn a remaining start position.

This meant that the third storyline taking place, today, focused on Romanian rider Vlad Dascalu’s performance and how if he finished 24th or better in Nove Mesto, his result would stamp Pidcock’s ticket to the Olympics. This bizarre drama within the race became heightened as Dascalu flirted with the Pidcock elimination line throughout the race. In the end, he finished 17th, and because of that, Pidcock gets to race his mountain bike in Tokyo.

Let’s break down how we got here.

The Olympic MTB event has a starting field of a paltry 38 riders. Japan gets one of those spots as the host nation, and the other 37 are up for grabs. The top two nations in the UCI rankings receive three spots each. Nations ranked third to seventh receive two spots. Nations ranked eighth through 21st receive one spot. That accounts for 31 of the 38 spots.

Switzerland and Italy can send three riders. France, Brazil, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany qualified to send two riders. The other 14 countries, starting with 8th place and the Czech Republic in the chart below, qualified to send one rider. [Note: the chart is updated through Albstadt and does not include Nove Mesto results.]

The qualifying rules are convoluted at best and tough to decipher. If you want to give it a go, you can find them here. Important for our analysis is how the final seven spots are disbursed. The highest-ranked rider for a country that was not among the top 21 nations at the 2019 continental championships for Africa, America, and Asia earned a spot. For example, Raphael Gagne won the 2019 Pan Am Championship, but because Canada is already in the top 21, that spot passed to Mexico after Gerardo Ullola finished second at the 2019 Pan Ams. China qualified through Mao Ha’s result, and Namibia got in because South Africans Alan Hatherly and Philip Buys finished first and second at the African championship but South Africa was already in the top 21 nations. Hence, Alex Miller’s third-place finish earned the spot for Namibia.

The final four spots were awarded at the 2019 World Championships, which took place at Mont-Sainte-Anne, and this is where things get a little bonkers. The top two finishers from qualifying countries (read: nations not in the top 21 rankings) in the elite and U23 championship events earned Olympic spots.

In 2019, Romanian Vlad Dascalu won the U23 World Championship earning Romania a spot in the Olympics. If you look again at the first chart above, you will see that Romania is the 22nd placed nation, only 51 points behind Slovakia. Here is why that is important.

If Dascalu (or any Romanian rider for that matter) placed 24th or better at Nove Mesto, that rider would earn enough points for Romania to move ahead of Slovakia and into the top 21. That would mean that Romania would no longer be eligible for the World Championship spot Dascalu earned, and it would instead belong to the next nation in the U23 World Champs standings that was not in the top 21 nation rankings.

Here are the results from that 2019 World Championship U23 race:

Before today, Dascalu from Romania and Martin Vidaurre Kossmann from Chile held the two World Championship qualifying spots for their nations. With Dascalu finishing 17th at Nove Mesto, he moved Romania 21 points ahead of Slovakia and into the top 21 nations. That meant that Romania now had an automatic spot, and the earned slot from Dascalu’s U23 Worlds victory would move to the next eligible country.

Looking at the nations the finishers in the U23 championship represented, Romania, Swizterland, Germany, Italy, Denmark, France, Norway, and Canada already were in the top 21 ranked nations. Their rider placements at the 2019 U23 World Championships were not eligible for an Olympic slot. That meant that the Olympic spot slipped all of the way down to Frazer Clacherty, in 14th place, racing for Great Britain. This finish by Clatcherty earned the first eligible placing, giving Great Britain its coveted Olympic spot and wallowing Pidcock to go to Tokyo.

In short, Dascalu’s performance at Nove Mesto earned Romania a spot among the top-ranked nations, which opened up the Olympic slot he earned at the World Championships in 2019 to GBR. Bizarrely, Pidcock is the reigning U23 World Champ, but last year’s championship was not an Olympic qualifying race because of the pandemic. So even though he would have determined his own destiny in a normal year by winning the 2020 U23 World Championship, his fate was in the hands of others.

Tom Pidcock’s amazing performance today did nothing to improve his chances of fulfilling his Olympic dreams. Instead, it came down to the guy who won the U23 World Championship the year before Pidcock won it and a 14th place performance by Tom’s countryman on that same day two years ago. Thank you notes are in order from Pidcock to both Dascalu and Clacherty. Maybe a postcard from Tokyo.

Side Note: one of the big story lines from the 2016 Rio Olympics was Peter Sagan racing the MTB race. After a spectacular running start from the back row, he moved into contention before flatting out of the race. If Sagan had harbored any dreams of attempting a re-do at the 2021 Olympics, those were also dashed by Dascalu’s performance. By finishing 17th and moving Romania into the top 21, Slovakia dropped to 22 and out of the Olympic picture. With no spot available, Sagan will have to watch this time on television with the rest of us.