I canāt help but think the 5-minute penalty might have been worth having a bike that would handle properly. He had to have been slowed down a fair bit by the wonky, heavier wheel that bounced like a pogo stick on the technical stuff. Factor in the lack of sleep from being nervous about itā¦
Agreed, the author of the article left out any serious analysis. My stat head side says, āamateurā. Whereās the TAR (time against replacement)? It screams for a logistic regression.
He finished in 36th place. Taking a 5 minute penalty would have put him in 139th place. And I would hardly call these guys amateurs.
The author is an amateur, not the rider or his mechanic. I am sorry that wasnāt clear from my post. I donāt actually know anything about the author and I apologize for hurting his feelings.
The question isnāt where heād place with an additional 5-minutes on top of his existing finishing time, but rather, how much time did he lose trying to race tired and stressed with a wonky wheel that was heavier, affecting his handling, and bouncing heavily due to being inflated to maximum pressure? Did the reduced performance cost him 30-seconds or 10-minutes? 
Itās unlikely that weād ever know the answer.
His total time was 40:16.32 and he was only 11.29 seconds behind the fastest time in the final stage (he finished 10th), so it seems clear he made the right decision. It certainly would have been nice if that info was included in the article.
Thatās fair. Finishing 36th was less than 3 minutes behind the winner, so the top times donāt have a crazy spread. He is currently ranked 16th overall with 1 race left, so he is a top 20 racer. I agree that it probably affected his ride and performance at first as shown by his time on stage 4. His times got better for stages 5 and 6 and then he pulled off 10th on stage 7. Iād say once he got the hang of it it didnāt effect him much at all. But when this is your job you do what you have to do I guess, plus there was probably a fair bit of pride for the rider and the mechanic not wanting to have to take a penalty and then the fact that the wheel survived(ish) its a bit of an ego boost to the mechanic/ product. Safe to say none of us are going to finish a ride on a rim just for the sake of getting a strava time haha. And at the end of the day all I do is watch the race recaps and then go ride my bike much much much slower than any of these guys. I just like looking at the stats.
Definitely a lot of info lacking from the article, thanks for that update @Ghost. And yeah, it definitely looks like they made the right decision. I suppose doing silly things for the sake of pride or ājust to see if we canā is a big part of mountain biking anyway. 