Sometimes, folks, people make mistakes. And they can either fail to acknowledge the role they played in it, or they can make necessary changes to ensure they don’t make those kinds of mistakes again. Sometimes they’re going too fast (or publishing too quickly), and it blindsides them.
We all remember Joey’s infamous crash at Starcrossed in the Singlespeed Eliminator races. It became an Internet sensation, certainly got people talking, and now he’s onto building strong wheels.
Of course, we can only control what’s in our control. But in this case, while shared and complimented by some, the (pre-edited) Wednesday Worlds article was seen by others as insensitive at the very least, despite the author’s best intentions. The “disclaimer” at the top was intended to warn some of the readership that the next few minutes of a male perspective on another male-centered topic may not be targeted to them, but instead, to some (including myself) it came across as an exclusionary and unnecessary intro. Our goal isn’t for every article to target and please every reader, but hope the breadth of our coverage and content does so.
Polarization is never the goal, though like most publications, we leave room for opinions and disagreement. However, it’s clear that yesterday’s piece missed the mark, and after some internal conversations and feedback, we made some changes to a bit of the wording and order of the editorial throughout the day; please let us know if we missed anything, and as always, thanks for your invaluable feedback.
This Throwback Thursday, we wanted to share a video compilation that loosely parallels this story. One that best shows the way the ‘cross community pulls together to support the racers who mucked up the feature that most other people gracefully got through, after some well-deserved heckling.
But it wasn’t quite cringe-worthy enough. It didn’t quite reflect that remorseful feeling of having to dust ourselves off after catching a pedal, or front wheel washing, and hitting the ground.
Join us in revisiting some big mistakes made by the likes of Van Aert and Eva Lechner this past season. Like most screw-ups, they shall forever live on the internet.
