At the World Champs things start earlier in the week and the schedule is far more disjointed. Track walk was on Wednesday last year in Andorra, and practice is split in to Juniors, Women and Elite men slots. All the while dovetailed between Cross Country and Trials scheduling. This can mean a short period of practice in the day, or big gaps between sessions that can make practice days feel long, but also quite limited in terms of track time.

There is no seeding run, with riders seeded for the final via their UCI ranking. There used to be a seeding run, but this caused problems with riders ‘sand bagging’, and stopping on track, or slowing to secure an earlier time slot. This was done either to reduce the pressure on them, or to get more favourable weather conditions. This seeding run has now been replaced by a timed training run, which offers nothing but a marker to who wanted to put in a fast run against the clock before racing starts.

British Cycling offers support for this event to the GB team and sends along a team of people, this seems to vary year to year and can be useful to a degree. Bringing in experts to help and assist at a World Championships is excellent in theory, but if they aren’t thoroughly familiar with the sport, it can almost cause more confusion and change for the riders. I experienced this in Val di Sole in 2008 with a GB representative trying to change certain plans and offer massages when the rider in question wasn’t used to this at all during a race weekend and it just added another element of the unfamiliar. British Cycling offer funding for travel to the riders if selected but this does depend on the criteria met, and often isn’t full funding. I don’t know the figures for this year, but in previous years it has been part funding unless you have met specific criteria. I have also heard that in previous years riders have been asked to pay for their GB race jersey, which is a sorry situation in my opinion.

SELECTION

At a World Cup event you need points to qualify for the event, are then ranked, and the top 80 men have a separate practice session. The top 20 riders are also protected during qualifying in case of crashes/mechanicals.

However, at the World Champs you are selected to represent your country by reaching various national qualifying criteria. This can produce a field that has a much bigger variation in skill/ performance level. From our perspective ‘Team GB’ has a very competitive selection process and the team manager, alongside the selection committee at British Cycling, will choose their riders. This often means very fast riders wont make the team, as there is such strength in depth in this country. Riders who have been in the top 20 or 30 at World Cups this year may not even make the grade. But the flip side is that for some nations with a less competitive national set up, they can select riders who are well below the required standard to race a World Cup.

I’ve seen riders from Israel, Kazakhstan, Columbia, Hungary and Poland (to name just a few) who are proudly representing their country, but in all honesty are not suited to a challenging international standard track and can cause problems for the fast guys and women as they are riding very different lines and at a much slower speed!

KIT

From a marketing point of view the World Championships really is a showcase for companies and they will often spray custom bikes, helmets, shoes, pedals, bars… you name it, it will be a ‘one off’ for that race and have the photographers slavering over it for pictures. Not only that, but bikes can be modified for this race – Pietermaritzburg being a case in point, where the relatively smooth and pedally track led to some riders racing lighter and stiffer bikes with dropper posts.

At one stage lycra was worn for the event – even when it had been ‘outlawed’ in the World Cup series, with the road dominated governing bodies cladding the riders in their road kit. The Kiwis seemed to always look good in their black kit with the white fern – short sleeves, minimal padding, and flat out style.

Personally I’d like to get back to this no holds barred approach to race kit and lycra – it is a time trial down a hill after all and when medals are decided by fractions of a second, why are we bothering to find these time advantages in the body through fitness, or the bike through set up but not via lycra clothing ‘because it doesn’t suit the image of Downhill’? There are plenty of images to show how cool Palmer, Peaty etc looked in full lycra and bullet heads back in the day and we should lead not follow moto in that respect, so I don’t buy that. In an event that is seen by a much wider audience it also leaves more questions as to its validity as a true ‘against the clock’ race by those viewing from outside our little downhill bubble.