A little* late in the day thanks to gremlins in the system (*OK, a lot – please accept our apologies, and then pass the coffee…), here’s a quick round-up of last weekend’s World Cup XCO and DH rounds at Mont St. Anne, Canada. We reckon results like this are worth celebrating – and you can never have too much video on a humpday, can you?
DH – Brit clean sweep!
This was Mont St. Anne’s 25th appearance as a World Cup DH venue – at just over 3km long and with 805m of vertical drop, it’s a well-loved course, as Aaron Gwin explains:
“It’s definitely fast the whole way down fast – there’s a lot of sections where you’re just leaning back and death-gripping… You’ve gotta be on your mark and on your line and hold speed through the tighter woods. The speed that you can go in and out of all the tight turns is pretty wild and pretty exciting and amazing to watch, it’s very exciting to watch. It’s one of the best-built tracks on the World Cup circuit.”
From the looks of Claudio and Tahnee Seagrave’s pre-ride, it reminds us of a very, very extended play version of ‘that flat bit in the woods at Fort William’ – complete with elbows-in, don’t-blink, speeder bike bits. Ace.
The rain threw its spanner into the qualifying works, with Troy Brosnan and Rachel Atherton coming out on top, but race day was more of a mixed bag – the proverbial sunshine and showers, if you will. It worked out well enough though, with British riders scoring top steps all round – Josh Bryceland, Rachel Atherton and Laurie Greenland cleaning up in the mens, womens and juniors categories respectively. Loic Bruni put in the now de rigeur chainless run to finish in second, with Tory Brosnan rounding out the senior men’s podium.
Elsewhere in the women’s event, Manon Carpenter finished second, with Miriam Nicole third and Tahnee Seagrave in fourth – it’s great to see such consistent performances from the British girls, who are putting on a fantastic show this year. Second-place qualifier Emmeline Ragot was a DNS following a practice crash – hopefully she’ll be back on track soon to keep the pressure up.
XC – Thrills and spills
The XCO track at Mont St. Anne is renowned for being a tough and technical ride – it’s got as much of a reputation as the DH course has, and we are more than happy to admit that we wouldn’t ride that with our saddle up there if we were paid to (and most of these guys/girls are). They have skills.
The perpetually second Nino Schurter took the win in the senior men’s event and now dons the series leader jersey, with Julien Absalon and Florian Vogel following behind. Jolanda Neff, Catharine Pendrel and Pauline Ferrand Prevot took the 1-2-3 in the women’s.
In the U23 women’s race, Brit Alice Barnes took a fantastic podium spot and the highest position of her career so far, finishing 3rd. Senior Annie Last rode within the top ten, until a crash put her into a finish position of 27th – “Not my day today in MSA World Cup. Unsure how I managed it but I had a big crash whilst riding well! Still managed to finish the bike race.” It wasn’t U23 Grant Ferguson’s day either, with mechanical issues seeing him pulled from the race under the 80% rule.
Next stop for the UCI circus is Windham, with XCO and DH events both winding up right now. Here’s the preview – enjoy.
Mont St. Anne results in full from the UCI