Why not downhill? It’s a question I ask myself every four years in the run up to the Olympics – why is XC racing alone worthy of an Olympic gold medal?

Afterall, downhill is much more exciting to watch than XC: I don’t care how thrilling it’ll be to see Tom Pidcock or Olympic hopeful Evie Richards win on the last lap (I hope!), watching a rider hit a slick rock garden at 50kph is electrifying.

Tom Pidcock celebrates winning the gold at Izu, Shizuoka, Japan, in 2021… a medal we hope he retains in 2024

Downhill racing is also much better suited to the Olympic format than XC, it takes its cue from downhill skiing, so we know it’s a format the IOC already knows about and understands.

It’s great to follow too, and easy for for TV coverage – although how to watch the Paris Olympics XC is a pretty easy affair, it’s on the BBC. DH is much more user-friendly from a layman’s point of view though, you can click onto DH racing and instantly understand what’s going on, with the time and rider to beat sitting fidgeting in the hot seat at the bottom.

Downhill mountain is also much more like the stuff most of us do on a weekly basis too. I don’t wear lycra, I don’t ride multiple laps of a 5km loop and I don’t absolutely bury myself on the climbs. And while I don’t wear a full face helmet either (not for most rides anyway) I do prioritise the descents and ride every techie piece of singletrack as though there was a stopwatch running.

The Crans Montana XC World Cup course was very technical, and just what we want to see

Well, here’s why not…

I’d hate to see downhill in the Olympics because I have no faith that the IOC, which organises the Games, could or would do it justice. Case in point, the XC mountain biking is taking place this weekend on an XC Olympic course that’s frankly nothing like the mountain biking I enjoy. It’s also a far cry from the brilliant World Cup XC courses we’ve seen this year, with Crans Montana being the epitome of a modern XC track – technical, natural looking and tough as nails.

The XCO course for Paris is packed with man-made features, which help spice things up… but is this what mountain biking means to you?

It’s not the course designers fault though, Nick Floros has packed it with enough drops and rocky sections to put the fear into any XC rider. Besides, he’s built Olympic tracks from Rio to Tokyo. No, the problem here is the location, an old quarry-turned-rubbish-dump that rises to a feeble 231mm is not the right place for an XCO course, the wonderful views of the Eiffel Tower notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic (and keep going, cross America and hald the Pacific) the surfing is taking place in Teahupoʻo, a small village in Tahiti. It’s about as far away from Paris as you can go without needing oxygen. I’m fine with that if it’s a great place for a surfing competition, but we’ve heard it’s big wave territory, the kind of boiling sea you go into and hope to come out of alive.

Where would the Olympic downhill mountain biking have ended up? Probably straight down the glacier at Alpe d’Huez (actually that might be quite cool).

Just as importantly, I don’t think the racing would be as exciting as a World Cup. Nation states rather than individuals or teams compete at the Olympics, meaning there are limits to the number of riders that could compete from each country. For XCO that’s currently two of each gender, with four riders from Team GB taking part this weekend, for example. Assuming downhill copied this format some of the best riders in the world would be unable to take part. Fewer top-performing riders means less tight racing, which is ultimately less exciting to watch.

Think about France – Loic Bruni, Amaury Pierron, Loris Vergier, Benoit Coulanges, and Thibault Daprela are all former World Cup winners or world champions… you’d have to miss seeing three of them ride.

Waiting for downhill to drop in

I’m not too worried it’ll happen because there are IOC rules to conform to, if you want in. At its most basic level, a sport has to be practised by men in 75 countries and on four continents, and by women in 40 countries and three continents. I could be wrong, but I don’t think downhill would meet that bar.

For the IOC to admit another sport to its jamboree it also needs to boot one out, and I can’t see elitist sports like polo or eventing given the heave-ho any time soon, no matter how few people play them or how many horses are thrashed with a whip.