All important races over, it is time to strike a balance, and I would like to offer a few thoughts:
If I assess the ressources of Italian DH, I come to the same conclusion as last year: they are good!
More and more locations for FR and DH are offered by mountain resorts and clubs. Many joyful races take place on all levels. No country, I believe, has such a large group of master downhillers. There are numerous official trade teams from Italy, with dedicated team managers. There are scores of components producers, even of competitive frames. The activity level is high, even during the financial crises.
So why all the talk of crisis? I would like to raise two issues
1. Frustrating problems at important national events:
Enourmous efforts of organizers are too often in vain because of some imperfections which are exposed in particular when unexpected events or challenges come up. Unfortunately, this wonderful sport takes place in a mountain environment, where weather events like a thunderstorm are not unlikely: Caspoggio and Collio in 2008, Caldirola in 2009. This means, that such events must be prepared for to guarantee a correct race. Racers should not be set in jeopardy, but also must be able to collect the fruit of their effort. It seems that iXS and Avalanche have delopped standards for the organization of races, that could be examples. Maybe some recognized and expert leaders can get together to specify the standards and find organizers able to comply
2. Backlash in international team ranking
As feared last year, the retirement of Alan Beggin has left a hole impossible to fill quickly. Lorenzo has achieved a net advancement and has climbed to about the same UCI rank where Alan was at the end of 2008; all others have not been able to advance, partly because of injuries (Bugnone, Cozzi, Somvi, Sottocornola and others) partly because of a strain of mishaps and underperformance. There is another factor to be taken into account that is the increasing number of high performance pilots, in particular from english-speaking countries and France, which creates a high density of good runs. When looking at the biography of the young achievers like Blenkinsop, Fairclough, Bryceland, Mac Donald, Giordanengo we will see that they sit in the saddle all year round since finishing secondary school or even earlier. Difficult to emulate, when we put school first. There is, however, no way to go to school or work regularly and arrive at top 25 in UCI ranking. Maybe, some universities or colleges or vocational training schools may offer adjusted courses for top MTB sports, or the Italian military creates an MTB unit. In the end, it is the individual pilot, who has to put his full dedication. Maybe he does not show it and loves to make fun, but I have seen Lorenzo working in deepest winter with a broken wrist, following the plan of the CT.
In any case, I am confident, that next year will be better: we will see joyful national races and some excellent international race results of Italian racers.