The Life Time wild card situation was crazier than I thought

Crashes factor in Life Time Grand Prix wild card results

I wrote about the Life Time Grand Prix wildcard standings after Sea Otter, and I mentioned them in my post-Unbound update as well. What I didn’t realize until later was how dramatically the women’s standings changed at Unbound.

To recap, the top 3 women after Sea Otter were Anna Yamauchi, Emily Newsom, and Hannah Shell. (Remember that the top 3 after Unbound would get a spot in the full Life Time Grand Prix.)

However, none of those top 3 racers finished Unbound, pushing them far enough down the standings that none of them would be selected for a wild card spot.

The three women who did get the call-up were Leah Van Der Linden, Haley Dumke, and Laurel Quinones.

Yamauchi, Newsom, and Shell all had similar stories from Unbound. All three crashed in the frantic first half of the race and injured themselves and/or suffered mechanicals.

Much of the post-Unbound discussion has been around safety and crashes. Anecdotally, riders in both the women’s and men’s fields say that the fields felt even more hectic this year. Some even said that there were riders in the elite fields that did not have the skills to be there. Both Newsom and Lauren De Crescenzo wrote about this after the race, and it was reported by Amanda Nauman on the Groadio Podcast that Life Time let more riders than ever into the elite fields.

LDC and Newsom are calling for stricter requirements to get into the elite field. The crashes also call into question if the wild card system needs an adjustment. On the topic of crashes, I typically stick with the argument that crashing is a part of racing, and if you want to win or do well you need to keep the rubber side down. There will still be crashes even with stricter regulations on the pro fields.

Does the wild card system system need a rethink given the likelihood of crashes at Unbound? To me, it feels like a wild coincidence that crashes took out all of the top 3 wild card favorites. Crashes of course happened in the men’s race too—previous winner Keegan Swenson crashed—but those crashes did not impact the wild card contenders in the men’s field.

I’m in favor of letting the wild card system play out for another year before adjustments are made. I’m also not sure if there’s a great alternative to the current wild card structure and for mitigating crashes at Unbound.

My previous article mentioned the men’s wild cards, but it turns out that the battle for the fourth wild card spot was exceptionally close. (Remember again that a fourth spot opened in the men’s contest because Howard Grotts dropped out of the series, and Petr Vakoc declined his selected, essentially moving everybody up a spot).

After Unbound, Skyler Taylor and Tobin Ortenblad were tied for fourth. The rules state that any tie would be broken by a rider’s cumulative time from Sea Otter and Unbound, and Taylor had the lowest time. Taylor beat Ortenblad by about five minutes at Unbound, a strikingly close margin after more than 9 hours of racing plus more when you factor in Sea Otter.

Shoutout to the With Pace and Groadio podcasts for discussing the wild card situations and bringing my attention to how things played out.

I’m looking forward to seeing how the wild card selections fare in the rest of the series.