Thats the stupidest looking course I have ever seen. Whoevers idea it was to put the race in Essex was a moron. Why oh why didn't they go with Swinley Forest, a place that hosts races on a regular basis and has _actual_ mountain bike trails.

Also has:

Space for pit areas and access trails through the forest that can be sustainably reinforced for the duration.

3 local train stations covering 2 routes from Gatwick > Reading, and Reading to Waterloo.

Good access to M3 and M4 motorways.

Onsite facilities such a cafe, bike hire etc....

I reckon the Olympic athletes will probably bring their own bikes, so no need for onsite bike hire! ; )

I have the feeling that the olympic athletes will have their own bikes,but it would be nice if they wanted to upgrade on the day;-)

LoL,just beat me to it.

This is a great way of making this kind of event into a spectator sport, which will in turn attract more sponsors(more coverage). And being able to see where the riders are in relation to eachother will lead to more exciting racing.

Would be good to have a shop, just in case one of the athletes forgets thier bike at home.

But you do get a peek of the Thames Estuary!! Big deal. £800,000, bloody ridiculous to spend so much constructing a site in bloody Essex when the UK in general has a vast array of locations with established tracks and courses in stunning locations, it's no wonder this country is broke.

This is an awesome opportunity for the UK to be in the world spotlight to show what the UK has to offer the MTBer and also to drag in tourism, and the best they could come up with is Essex?? Unreal.

Senoj - you need to be quicker on that submit button!!!

Mind you neither of us mentioned that if there's no cafe onsite, the Olympians will have to bring their own packed lunches. If Seb Coe is reading this I'm happy to tender for the chance to cater. I don't nipping down the local shops to pick up some sausage rolls, scotch eggs, pork pies and a couple of cheese sarnies not forgetting some stuffed vine leaves for the Greek contingent.

I'm actually pleasantly surprised - it actually looks better and steeper than the original location shots implied.

Yes Swinley makes more sense; has better transport links and an established infrastructure etc etc; but imagine the fuss kicked up if you started tarting up an existing popular/well used spot especially for the Olympics..eg .closed to the public for months while infrastructure is built up, new car-park constructed, half the trees would have to come down so you could get the cameras and the public close to the action.

So yes choosing this crappy spot in Essex might seem stupid, but it ends up creating a possible new riding spot for Londoners after the game and it means the rest of us can ride our normal spots without them getting buggered around with for the next 2 years.

£800,000 for course that is only going to be potentially used for 3 weeks at the most. Bloody hell what a waste of money. Stick it in a place where mountain bikers actually want to race and that would be a blinding legacy. Idiots that know nothing about mountain biking. XC races nowadays are more like cycle cross than mountain biking. I know lets race on fire roads and call it mountain biking. The surface needs to be rough all the way around not just in a couple of places with chicken runs. Now are those chicken runs going to be designed properly and be double the time than doing the main route, I bet not.

I take their point about TV coverage but come on you can find a better place than a farmers field.

This is the problem when people like the BCF get involved who know nothing about proper mountain biking, arghhhhh

Wasted money!!!!

Well, I must be the only happy one about this decision! OK, it might not be great for olympic standards, but as I live in essex, this is brilliant for me post olympics! will be a nice change for us in the east who only have thetford, more than one trail less than an hours drive!

"XC races nowadays are more like cycle cross than mountain biking. I know lets race on fire roads and call it mountain biking. The surface needs to be rough all the way around not just in a couple of places with chicken runs. Now are those chicken runs going to be designed properly and be double the time than doing the main route, I bet not."

You quite clearly haven't been to watch a World Cup race recently. The XC course they raced on at Dalby was tought start to finish, the only easy bit was the opening sprint round the arena to split the riders up! Otherwise the course was both extremly technically challenging, with some outrageously difficult obstacles, and also physically tough - even to the point that one section was so steep even the leaders pushed their bikes up it every lap!

I suspect that if the UCI give it the tick it'll end up more difficult than it may look currently - things can take a different appearance when you're sat on the bike about to attempt something - I entered the Dalby Dare the day before the pro race and OMG it was tough and OMG they were sooooooooo much quicker!

I'm not totally supporting building something totally man made in a field in Essex mind, it does seem like a strange location considering it may not even be kept open. I think it's good they're building something new and the South East isn't that well catered for so in terms of building 'a legacy' I think that makes sense, but you have gotta think they could have picked a more natural and scenic spot. I would have suggested the New Forrest I think, stunning area, well setup for most cyclist, but lacking a really decent red route!

Time will tell hey...

the only section I would say was divoid of challenge was the opening (neccessary) sprint round the field / arena to split the riders up before hitting the course.

This looks a long way from the real spirit of mountainbiking - it looks like a cyclo cross course designed by roadies. An epic 50km race across mid-Wales would be more inkeeping with the roots of the sport, and with a few good fixed camera positions, a helicopter and some cameras on motocross bikes a marathon-style event could make good TV too. The TDF and Paris-Roubaix look great on TV, and they're certainly not on a little track in a field. There simply doesn't look to be enough technical challenge for a real mountainbike race, the one rocky drop being the only exception and the only spot where someone stands a chance of falling off.

"There simply doesn't look to be enough technical challenge for a real mountainbike race, the one rocky drop being the only exception and the only spot where someone stands a chance of falling off."

One? If you actually read the article and looked at the pictures before jumping on the hate bandwagon it'd help...

£800,000 seems really cheap. I imagine converting an established MTB centre to accommodate the messy logistical paraphenalia of the Olympics would have cost far more. I hope the Salvation Army get a few new horns out of it for the their carols band.

Winge winge winge. The usual 'Negative Britain'. Its only half built at the moment!

The one of the best points of hosting Olympics is that it bring facilities to places that have none. Not to just use what already exists. So it will be great if a deal is done to keep this open after 2012.

I wish Martin and crew the best of luck and look forward to riding there (hopefully there will be a BMBS test event there before the big day).

I think that the builders have made the best of a bad idea.

moan, moan, moan.

How many millions have been spent in everywhere else etc on trail centres and we get £800k. Essex has no proper centres, hardly any bridleways and was virtually ignored during the Sustrans bids.

I concur with others, some of the regional races I have entered are more like cyclocross these days, all fire roads. And why Essex, and why a purpose built track. The UK has so many great venues which mix natural and constructed trails, with proper technical challenges and hills. This venue will do nothing to show case what the UK has to offer. And yet again why so near London, I am from Surrey but would think Wales, Scotland, or the North could have offered a far more interesting venue. And as everyone in the UK is paying surely some of Olympics should be spread to the regions. 5km also seems very short.

I dont know whats happend to MTB recently, when so called riders cant tell the difference between a CX and XC course and when they expect an XC course to be like their local trail centre.

It is the London Olympics, not the England Olympics, hence the location in the south east. Although being a pedant, it would have been better still, if you're going to make a man made course, to put it up in Hyde Park.

I'm generally in the positive camp over this one, looks like a reasonably challenging xc course and it seem's they've made the best out of a bad hand.

i do agree however, and going back on my original point, that to place it in the north, or even god forbid, Wales or Scotland, would have made for a better, more naturally challenging circuit.

Also, £800,000 - in the grand scheme of things, that's not even going to pay a day of this country's interest repayments, so i cna think of worse things to waste it on!

Simon

I have to do more climbing every training ride than this coures offers,just to get out of the village i live in!!

Have any of the moaners actually ever been to Essex? We have a thriving mountain bike scene which doesn't get the support it deserves so to have an olympic course as a venue we can all use after the games will be a massive boost. Only hope the powers that be don't ruin it by removing all the challenging bits.

Let's all stop knocking where it is, how much has been spent and whether there is a cafe or not and get behind the event. It should do wonders for our sport longer term and mountain biking in the area which can't be a bad thing.

+1 mate starting to get p*** off with all the negative towards everything south east

Bonehead21

Have any of the moaners actually ever been to Essex?

Yes!

And have great memories of the place,showing my age here....i used to love the Essex winters series years ago when i first started racing.

And have raced in a lot of other events in Essex and south east before moving to Spain.

That downhill manmade rock garden if anything like the ones here in the mountains of Madrid will be fun in the wet!

Two words - North Downs.

..Clearly I meant Cafe and Bike hire for the spectators. Athletes will bring their sandwiches in their rucksacks, and the Olympics are providing free bromptons for all the competitors.... Its all they'll need by the looks of it.

I stand by my comment on it being a stupid venue. Essex itself is fine, just show me the mature, once-in-a-lifetime-event-race-worthy-venue and I will shut up. I expect several posts following this pointing such essex based venues out - which will prove even more so why this is such an epic fail. XC MTB is not track cycling off road, no matter how dumbed down the Olympics committee want it to be. The UK has a great and vibrant MTB and especially XC scene, which will be shown to the world as nothing more than a well groomed trail in a slightly inclined park.

Put it another way - this is the XC equivalent of a Triathlon held using a swimming pool, treadmills and turbo trainers.

"... by the looks of it.

Speaks volumes I'd say. The words knee and Jerk spring to mind

I agree that with areas like the north down, Leith hill etc and Swinley Forest on London's doorstep and already established mountain bike trails. It seems daft to build a entire man made course in a field in Essex, a county not renowned for its hills.

But trying to stage it in Swinley would mean a lot of disruption to the existing trails. the car park is barely big enough to cope at weekends let alone the Olympics.

Swinley is also a heavily wooded area so where do you put the start finish straight the grandstands etc then there's all the equipment needed for the TV broadcast and press.

Areas like Leith hill, Pitch and Holmbury have the same issues.

Would have to be a lot of work done to accommodate the needs of the Olympics being a world wide viewed event big changes would have to done to the existing trails in infrastructure.

The Essex venue will give good spectator positions and TV coverage because of it's open nature. if it wasn't going to be challenging enough then I think the UCI would have said something. It also means i can still ride the trails i love and then the possibility of a new trail available after the Olympics.

this hereby concludes my rant

It would be no hassle for Swinley. They host races frequently, and more than that they often have film crews in, complete with convoys of trucks. Just watch the next Harry Potter film when it's out and see if you can spot some Swinley locations ;)

Swinley is vast enough to section off an area without too much disruption. Film crews doing this in the past have closed off sections for a month or two at a time with no hassle. This is a week of disruption. It could have even been a dedicated track built somewhere currently unused in Swinley, and they'd have loads of natural technical features to take advantage of. Once finished there'd be a great course added to Swinley for all to use. The one in Essex will almost certainly be ripped up.

Or if they want open country with views, North Downs or Surrey Hills. Again, don't use the existing network of trails, just get a scrap of land similar to they did in Essex, but instead you'd get gobsmacking views of the downs instead of some ugly oil refinery! and at least it would be on a hill with 300m elevation instead of 70!

Even if the course turns out to be decent enough, I just feel the rest of the world will be laughing at us when they tune in to see "mountain" biking in the Olympics!

If the sailing had to go to Weymouth because it was supposedly the nearest facility (which is rubbish itself), they could have gone to the nearest proper mountain. Wales for example. Or at least the nearest proper mountain biking facility.

They should've just held the Olympic games in Plymouth. Then there'd be no problem.