Cross-Country, Men

Mountain bike tracks have changed in the 20 years since the sports Olympic début in Atlanta 1996, which consisted of a very basic compact dirt course set in beside the equestrian venue. Meanwhile at London 2012 at Hadleigh Farms, the course was enjoyed by the riders and was very spectator friendly (rated at 60% visibility). The South African course designer for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games mountain bike course, Nick Floros, created a technically challenging course for the riders, yet one that allowed the spectators to enjoy the competition as much as possible, with an 85% visibility, all while making use of the natural landscape at the Deodoro venue.

The Mountain Bike Centre in Rio was one of three venues that comprised the X-Park (along with canoe slalom and BMX), and was built with legacy in mind, remaining open to the public following the Olympics. The mountain bike course consisted of grassy wide-open stretches combined with man-made obstacles and serious slopes - a marked difference from the more level terrain four years before in London 2012.

The mountain bike races were mass start events on 20 (women) and 21 (men) August 2016. Riders were seeded into a starting grid according to their current Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) ranking. The riders completed one 0.57 km start loop, followed by six laps of the course for women (29.67 km) and seven laps for the men (34.52 km), where each lap was 4.85 km long. The total number of laps to be raced was announced at the team managers’ meeting on the day before the first race with the aim to ensure that the winning time was within the set parameters.

With the same rules and competition format, the only differences between the World Championships and the Olympic Games is that there are more competitors in the field at World Championships, due to different quotas for each National Olympic Committee (NOC): at the Olympic Games there are a maximum of three men and two women per NOC. There were no rule and competition format changes since the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

The men’s mountain bike race at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio started at 12:30 pm on 21 August 2016 and consisted of 49 riders from 32 nations. It was 23 degrees Celsius. As aforementioned, the race configuration consisted of one start loop of 0.57 km plus seven laps of the course for a total of 34.52 km. 2015 World road champion, Slovakia’s Peter Sagan put in a notable opening lap, moving from the back of the field into the lead group by the end of the first lap, but a flat tire at the beginning of the second lap ended his Olympic medal dream. It was then Switzerland’s Nino Schurter who took the early lead with Spaniard Carlos Coloma, but defending Olympic champion Jaroslav Kulhavý of Czech Republic soon joined them as Coloma lost pace. The two-time Olympic champion (and five-time World champion), France’s Julien Absalon faded to two minutes back as the leaders set a scorching pace.

Starting the fifth of the seven lap race, Schurter and Kulhavý had 30 seconds lead on the two-man chase of Coloma and Maxime Marotte of France, while Switzerland’s Mathias Fluckiger was chasing in fifth, more than a minute behind. The lead duo held an initial gap of more than 30 seconds over the first group behind them, who by this time appeared to be racing for bronze.

Schurter dropped Kulhavý as they approached a technical rock section, opening a gap that he would hold until the finish. The Swiss rider started the final lap with a 33-second gap over Kulhavý, while Marotte and Coloma were 1:19 behind. Schurter continued to open his gap over the final lap, holding a 44-second lead on Kulhavý with half a lap to go until the finish, and 1:50 over Coloma and Marotte.

Schurter won the gold 50 seconds ahead of Kulhavý, who won the silver. It was Coloma in for the bronze medal, 10 seconds ahead of Marotte in fourth. The two-time Olympic champion Absalon finished eighth. The medals were presented by Denis Oswald, IOC member (Switzerland) and Brian Cookson, President of the UCI Management Committee.