Women’s Olympic Mountain Bike Race Postponed To Saturday
BEIJING, Aug 21, 2008 (AFP) - The women’s Olympic mountain bike race has
been postponed until Saturday because of rain damage to the course, it was
confirmed on Thursday.
The race, held on a 4.5km loop to be raced for approximately 1 hour 40
minutes, was due to be held on Friday.
It means that both the women’s and men’s Olympic races will be held on
Saturday, with a scheduled start of 1000 for women and 1500 for the men.
After a meeting Thursday with organisers and informing all of the teams,
International Cycling Union (UCI) official Peter Van den Abeele told AFP: “The
course has been damaged by the weather conditions.
“It rained throughout the night and almost until 1500. It’s a very
technical course and the safety issues involved were decisive for us in making
this postponement.”
The UCI official said weather predictions for Saturday were “sunny”,
allowing the field to race in conditions similar to earlier this week when
they trained on the 4.5km loop that is raced for two hours by the men and 1hr
40min by the women.
“It’s probably the first time we’ve had to do this but the Games are only
once every four years,” added Ven den Abeele.
“The race has to be held in the fairest conditions possible. We don’t want
it becoming a lottery.”
Heavy rain early in the day forced the postponement of Thursday’s
semi-finals in the BMX bicycle competition until Friday.
Action in the men’s and women’s events had been due to start at 11:00 am
(0300 GMT) but the bad weather saw this intitially put back to 3:00 pm (0700
GMT).
As the downpour continued, a decision was taken to postpone racing until
Friday.
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