Get the drift: Olympic mountain bike racers worry about gravel on man-made Paris course

The Paris Olympic Games get underway this weekend with the women's and men's Mountain Bike Cross-country events taking place on a former landfill. The top competitors were mixed in their assessment of the Elancourt Hill course after their training runs this week, noting the loose gravel and fully man-made course differs from what inspired mountain biking as a sport.

Former Olympic champion Nino Schurter (Switzerland) voiced a unanimous assessment of the course.

"It's slippery, it's quite loose and quite wide. If you go fast it's super slippery," Schurter said. "I hope the gravel still goes a bit to the side and makes it less loose everywhere. You can feel there was no mountain biking before and it's 100% man-made, like we saw in London and in Rio. It could be a bit more natural, but in general, it's nice."

The top Dutch hopeful Puck Pieterse already did a full preview of the course last year ahead of the test event, so she knew what to expect but also noted the dry nature of the circuit will force riders to be comfortable with a little drift in the turns.

"It's good. Last year, we already had the chance to familiarise with the course and race here. They've made some small adjustments, but for the main part it's the same," Pieterse said. "There's a lot of gravel, which is slippery, especially in the corners, so you have to be careful.

"It's a course in which you have to be able to take a lot of speed into the corners and you shouldn't be afraid to drift a little on the slippery surface.

"The technical parts come quickly after each other but it's not such a long lap and there's no long three- to four-minute climb because all climbs are interrupted with little things," she said, adding, "You have to be good on any course."

Pieterse expected Pauline Ferrand Prévot to be the top contender on her home turf. "It's in her home country, she's the top favourite, so that will put the pressure on, but it can also give her wings. We'll find out on Sunday. I feel as if I did everything I could, so that gives me a lot of confidence."

The British riders Tom Pidcock - one of the top men's Olympic MTB favourites as defending champion - and Evie Richards weren't as bullish about the course, with Pidcock giving quite a blunt assessment.

"It's not the best course in the world but it's the same for everyone," Pidcock said. "It's bland and I think they could have done a better job of making a more mountain bike course.

"I love mountain biking for the reasons that drive us to enjoy it. That's the courses you get to ride, the places you get to go to. When you just gravel over a nice hillside, it's not really mountain biking."

Pidcock and Richards agreed that the course is less tactical than the ones they encounter during the season.

"There's not much thinking to go into either. It's kind of one line you just go down," Pidcock said.

"There's just one line. Normally you can choose different lines," Richards said before adding, "It's still technical because they've got lots of cool features, drops and jumps, but it's man-made. It's just one line, and you race that line. It's probably easier to learn, but just less choices when you come to race.

"I think they've done the best they've done. Being as close as Paris, it's not the easiest thing to just pop up a mountain bike course anywhere. If I was a designer, I'd like a lot more natural features rather than man-made. 

"But I think we normally see that at the Olympic Games, it's normally a bit of a different course than what we'd normally race at World Cups. We're normally in the Alps, somewhere, somewhere in a nice ski resort and this is super close to the city centre. I think they've done the best job of what they can do."

Dull course aside, Richards is excited to represent Britain at the Olympic Games.

"The Olympics is all I ever dreamt of and that's why I got into sport. Since the age of six, it was all I wanted to do. Not just for me, but for my family, for my grandparents, it's what we've all ever dreamt of. It's not just my dream, it's all my family's dream come true. They'll all be coming out to watch. Nothing feels quite like representing your country, especially at the Games."

Puck Pieterse's course preview

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