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news
Liam Phillips (picture Simon Wilkinson, SWPix, British Cycling)BMX riders refuse to race on 'unsafe' Rio 2016 Olympic course
Olympic BMX hopefuls have refused to ride a test event for the Rio 2016 Olympics, saying that the course was unsafe.
Liam Phillips, Britain's BMX Supercross double World Cup winner, was one of several riders to decide not to compete, saying that some of the jumps were too dangerous.
He wrote on instagram: "We shouldn't have to 'race' on such sub-standard tracks."
The test event will now take place on a modified course today.
Philips told the BBC: "Although I feel the sport took a step backwards today with the riders refusing to ride, it was extremely necessary for the riders' safety.
"We, more than anyone else, want a platform to showcase the sport of BMX."
The course was designed by Tom Ritzenthaler, who designed the last two Olympic courses in Beijing and London.
Phillips lost out at the 2012 London Games. He got a great start but fell away after one of his feet unclipped and was caught up in a crash as he drifted back through the field.
“I've defied all expectation to be here let alone be a contender, so I should be pleased with my performance even though I’m disappointed now,” he reflected at the time.
“It was the best start of my life, and that’s what you aim to do at the Olympics. But I overshot the second jump, and probably my first too - that’s how fast I came out of the gate.”
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22 comments
@notfastenough
The amount of work that goes into building any riding facility is never really understood unless you have been directly involved.
After 'retiring' from professional trail building, I only get involved with some local trail work in NW London for my own, and others enjoyment. Its all 'singletrack' for cross country riding and does not involve any stunts / features as such.
I've learnt a fair amount from reading these comments - Stumps might have been incorrect, but the replies to him have been quite enlightening. I had no idea that much thought went into places like Llandegla (the only trail centre I've used).
@Al__S
It's the bane of any trail builders life - especially BMX, Dirt Jump and Pump tracks which rely on flow to work properly
Making a change to a single feature, to get that feature to work properly, then causes a chain reaction along the trail / track
I've had pump tracks where to get the position, radius or angular shape of a pump bump correct, the spacing of every subsequent pump bump has had to be pushed further down the line = huge amount of work as you are knocking every pump bump down and moving all that material along.
however, this is small beer compared to a BMX track or Dirt Jumps where you are talking tonnes of material per feature, often requiring machine time
I hope the BMX stand will encourage the sailors and triathletes to boycott the bay they are meant to be using. It's a sewer basically and recently people got very sick after a test event. Not looking like a great venue for athlete's safety...
Liam is a top rider and would not get involved with a boycott unless it was critical to rider safety
I was involved in designing / building mountain bike parks and skate parks for many years, and fine tuning is a vital part of developing any facility whether an MTB trail, BMX track or skate park.
I can think of many occasions where designs did not work out properly (despite being well considered) and entire structures or trail sections had to be demolished and completely rebuilt.
Pump tracks, like BMX tracks, can take a lot of work to dial in, and changes made to one section has a direct impact on the following section, and so on.
I provided technical support at the multi-discipline Parkour Ride event in London last year, and I found Liam to be a very professional and pleasant ambassador for the sport of BMX
Hadn't even considered this- a small change to one part will change the speed you take it at, and thus the speed into following sections
I reckon the people in the best position to judge if a course is safe for racing (which is different to safe for riding) are the world's top riders?
Have to say I'm impressed with their stand. Not the only unsafe rio venue- I'm really surprised the sailors haven't got fed up with the literal shit they're having to put up with. Which is because Rio is a massively impoverished city that can't afford basic sanitation for a vast part of it's population
The course may have been devised by someone who done the last two Olympic tracks but he didn't build it
Mistakes can be made in the building process, not everything goes to plan and most jumps and ramps will need some slight tweaking once built and tested to iron out any issues
You can design a track as much as you like but the only way to test it works is to ride it
Been a bmx'er for 25+ years and had my fair share of off's (had one today on a jump at my local skatepark)
If a jump doesn't feel right then it can knock you off your flow and leave you not set up for the next jump and you end up either hooking up and going o.t.b (like me today) or landing on the backside of the landing in a heap
These guys are seriously agile and take huge knocks - if every rider stands together to say that the course is unsafe, I'd say it's a fair bet that it's unsafe.
"The course was devised by someone who's done the last 2 Olympics so i believe he knows what he's doing."
watch the London Olympic BMX races and see the huge number of stacks and if the designer intended that then the riders have a pretty reasonable complaint
I have seen how they build roads and bridges in Brazil and it ain't good.
The course designer's own test rider had issues with it. It clearly wasn't up to snuff.
Seems fair enough.
Just get on with it, you dont here MTB's complaining that the mountain they are going down is to steep or the trail is to windy through the trees ?
The course was devised by someone who's done the last 2 Olympics so i believe he knows what he's doing.
Actually that's not the case; the big features on world cup downhill MTB courses are extremely carefully designed and built, with local races run on the courses prior to the events to check how the track runs in a competition environment and adjustments made to the courses as needed (obviously that applies more to new tracks, or redesigns of track sections.
He probably does, but the people who built it may not have followed the design to the letter? I don't know if that's the case, just pointing out the possibility.
As an experienced BMX racer I know a fair bit about track design and maintenance, as well as riding them. The person who designed this one has had his share of criticism and a few people in the BMX circle have asked why he was given this contract. The London Olympics track was rebuilt after the Olympics because it was considered way too intense for more general use and it certainly had its share of crashes. It's all very well to tell the riders to just ride, but unless you've ridden an international standard track (and raced at one - eight on the gate is pretty intense, believe me), then you might not appreciate how big a major crash can be and the potential for major injury. MTB racers do not compete bar to bar.
Liam Phillips and Sam Willoughby and the other pro riders are at an elite level and I'd trust their judgement in deciding whether a track is unsafe. I met Liam some years back and he's a very approachable bloke and is not someone who'd whine without good reason. There are some good track builders around here in the UK as C&K have built all the top tracks like Cyclopark, Birmingham, the reworked Olympic Park, Peckham and Cumbernauld. There are also plenty of good track builders in the US and probably nearest at hand, in Colombia where BMX has a massive following. They clearly didn't use any of these experienced track builders in Brazil.
Just get on with it, you dont here MTB's complaining that the mountain they are going down is to steep or the trail is to windy through the trees ?
Not really a very good argument, the similarities between BMX and MTB DH or XC are virtually nil....its like comparing racing on the road to racing on the track....2 massively different disciplines which require very different conditions.
But with mountain biking one of the big things IS whether you can ride it. It's part of the challenge.
A bmx race is not about whether you can ride the course, just how fast. the skill is in the line choice, how well you pump the rollers and how much speed you can carry.
Also, apart from the first 100m or so (which is always on the flat) when have you seen mountain bikers that close together .... Answer? 4X, which is basically just a bmx race on bigger bikes, and where again it's not about if you can ride the course, but how fast.
Take a look at the track. It's huge. That's intimidating in itself. I think that part of the problem is that it's not laid out in a way that flows well though. If you're going to have such huge start hills and big jumps right out of berms the whole thing gets so technical that riders are just concentrating so much on getting the lines right to get through in one piece. This means less overtaking too so the racing may be less interesting.
Either that or Liam needs to pay more attention to rule 5. But I wouldn't want to suggest that to him.
What makes a BMX course unsafe? Surely it can only be made up of bumps and berms, unless it's the surface he's complaining about.
The shape of a jump is crucial in determining the way a bike flys through the air - the angle and lip has to be just right to ensure the correct trajectory and not kick the bike back or forward, and the distance to the landing must be correct for the anticipated race speed and the angle of the take-off. The berms need to be consistent and continue past the corner so that riders are not railing round and just fired into nothing (the number of mtb trail centres that mess this up is amazing).
Yes rider skill is crucial, but if either jumps or berms are built incorrectly, rider skill becomes irrelevant as it will just be impossible to ride consistently safely. The rider skill is about being able to ride the course quickly, not just simply being able to ride it.
When was the last time you looked at a modern day BMX track? Describing a track as bumps and berms is akin to describing New York as being a collection of sheds.