The offical 2008 Olympic cycling/BMX/mountain bike/TV Schedule thread(Merged)

What they have BMX racing in the X games? Since when?

 

I was thinking the same thing about Bennett. His shoulder & wrist likely were giving him too much problems for the semi-final.

Awesome for the rest of Team USA! Bronze for Kitner, and Silver & Bronze for Day & Robinson. Jared exited turn 1 SSOOOOOO great; too bad he lost speed in the rythm sections and then got taken out by the So.African rider...NERD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

i totally ruined it by reading the results online before actually getting to watch the footage.

laaaame. and I was totally rooting for graves because I watched f1rst the other night and they talked about his olympic aspirations.

 

I hope Downhill MTB would be a Olympic sport, That would be fun too watch. They could take out one of the boring sports out like speed walking or ping pong (ping pong? WTF whats next marbles or darts)

 

take the power walking out and put in foosball, darts and keep the table tennis... :beer:

 

The only problem would be can all host cites provide a good downhill course local to the host city?

 

olympic ping pong is crazy to watch!!!!! its totally not your garage table escapades...

 

how bout yogurt eating as the next olympic sports, im good at that

 

They need to put Helltrack in as the official BMX course!!

 

WTF? Women's XC was supposed to be today and now I can't find it. :?:

 

I think it got rescheduled.

Mott

 

I herd they were going to have Ding Dong Ditch in 2012......

The rains messed w/ the schedule...

 

The course consists of a 2.8 mile loop that climbs 200ft. 200ft?

Unless they have some very technical features in this course, it sounds like a big ring sprint-fest for a mountain bike. Maybe CX bikes would be more appropriate?

It's scheduled to show on NBC sometime beginning at 11:30pm on Saturday night. My DVR is set, but who knows if it will end up being shown.

Rain is just what would be needed to make this course interesting IMHO.

 

It climbs 250 meters. they run a lot of laps. That adds up!

 

Rain pushes women's mountain bike race to Saturday


Posted Thursday, August 21, 2008 4:32 AM ET
BEIJING (AP) - The Olympic women's mountain bike race has been pushed back one day to Saturday because heavy rain created unsafe and unsatisfactory course conditions.
Rain began falling early Thursday at the Laoshan cycling complex, and the first-ever Olympic BMX medal races, scheduled for that morning, were postponed until Friday.
Mountain bike training at the same venue, however, continued, and many racers reported afterward that several sections of the hard-pack course were too slippery to ride on safely. Thick mud also clogged some sections.
So instead of holding the women's race Friday and the men's race Saturday, Olympic officials have decided to hold a doubleheader Saturday, with the women racing in the morning and the men as originally scheduled in the afternoon.
More than an inch of rain fell at the venue Thursday, with periodic heavy downpours. Conditions were expected to improve Friday and Saturday.

copyright_

 

Absalon, Dahle Flesjaa to defend mountain bike gold


Posted Tuesday, August 19, 2008 11:27 PM ET
Getty Images
Absalon will be favored to repeat his gold medal performance from Athens four years ago.


BEIJING (AP) -- Until recently, no one would have bet against Julien Absalon of France to take the men's Olympic mountain biking title. He is still the favorite, but he has shown a few chinks in his armor this year.
The defending Olympic champion won four consecutive world championships through 2007, but this year failed to complete the course in Val di Sole, Italy, blaming heatstroke.
The man who won was the man who has run Absalon close all year in the World Cup, Christoph Sauser of Switzerland, and he will be Absalon's biggest challenger in Beijing, although he is returning from injury. He cut his knee on a rock during a World Cup race in Canada in July and the wound became infected.
"It's much better now. I can still feel it, but I can bend (my knee) all the way back," Sauser said.
Sauser headed an all-Swiss podium in Val di Sole, and the silver medalist, Florian Vogel, is also expected to be in the mix.
Athens silver medalist Jose Antonio Hermida of Spain and Atlanta gold medalist Bart Brentjens of Belgium will also be hoping for glory.
It's a similar story in the women's race, where the longtime number one has had a difficult couple of years. Athens gold medalist and four-time world champion Gunn-Rita Dahle Flesja of Norway missed most of the 2007 season with a virus and has been slowly coming back this season. However she was hit by illness again before a World Cup race in Canada at the beginning of the month and it is unclear how strong she will be in Beijing.
"We're a couple of steps away from where I was four years ago," Dahle Flesjaa acknowledged. "But we have shown a couple of times we've been up there."
With Dahle Flesjaa not yet back to strength, veteran Margarita Fullana of Spain took the world championship title this year, her first in eight years, and the Sydney bronze medalist will be seeking to capitalize on her good form.
Photos

• <LI class=PhotoElement> Gunn-Rita Dahle Flesja in Athens
  
  Gunn-Rita Dahle Flesja won the gold medal in women's mountain bike in Athens. She is married to her coach Kenneth Flesja.
• Julien Absalon in Athens

Related Stories

• Absalon
• Gunn-Rita Dahle Flesja bio
• American Gould shoots for medal
• Georgia Gould bio

Irina Kalentyeva of Russia, the 2007 world champion, and Sabine Spitz of Germany are also expected to be strong contenders.
Though mountain biking is heavily dominated by the Europeans, there is also good hope for Canada, especially in the women's event, where Marie-Helene Premont will seek to improve on the silver she won in Athens.
"Canada has always had a really good history in mountain biking," said Dan Proulx, who coaches Canada's younger woman hopeful, Catharine Pendrel. "We maybe don't have the depth, but the riders that we do bring to international competition are usually in the running.
"There is a strong connection to mountain biking in our culture, much more than, say, track or road. Especially where these riders are from, in the mountains, it is the culture there."
Chinese hopes lie with LIU Ying, winner of the women's under-23 world championships in 2007.
The mountain bikers have had to wait a long time for their chance at the Beijing Olympics. Theirs is the last of the four cycling disciplines to be contested, after three days of road racing, five days on the track and two of BMX.
The Laoshan mountain bike venue cost almost $10 million to construct. The race will consist of laps of the 4.5-kilometer (2.8-mile) course that climbs 60 meters (200 feet). The exact number of laps will be decided on race day based on the weather, but the intention is that the men's race will last about two hours and the women's 90 minutes.
As a change from the previous Olympics, this year there will be technical assistance zones, where riders can change wheels and other parts, but not get new bikes. They will also be allowed to carry tools with them, which they can share with other members of their team.

Copyright 2008 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited.

 

guess I'll be up late tonite watching.......can anyone record it to their cmptr or web? It'd be nice to see this without being up till all hours of the night/day...anyone? :?:

 

Women's mtb race is online live right now:

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/share.html?videoid=1431483

The course looks great!

 

thnx...watching now! :beer:

 

I can't seem to get the live video to start. I guess I'll watch it on replay since those work fine.