Junior Results Are In For The 2019 Fort William World Cup!
It’s the third and final day of the 2019 Fort William World Cup, and the junior field has just finished racing down the mountain.
While the rain had mostly held off for the morning, the clouds have started to swirl in over the Ben Nevis range, with the wind kicking up a notch around the top part of the course – 550m above the finish line.
Junior Women’s Finals Results
After taking the fastest time during qualifying, Austria’s Vali Holl was looking very fast during the first part of the race track. Unfortunately a suspected crash in the woods section foiled her run for World Cup victory, and in the end she finishing nearly five seconds down over Anna Newkirk of the SRAM Young Guns Racing team.
Despite the poor weather, Newkirk put a few seconds into Holl’s qualifying time of 5:36.238 from yesterday, finishing with an incredible run of 5:33.585.
In fact all the racers were either as fast or faster than their qualifying runs, with Norwegian Mille Johnset from the Atherton Bikes team coming in third, France’s Lauryne Chappaz in fourth, and Irish lass McKenna Merten in fifth. Sabine Thies was a DNS. The average speed? Over 32km/h for the 3km race course.
- Anna Newkirk – 5:33.585
- Valentina Holl – 5:37.074
- Mille Johnset – 5:43.177
- Lauryne Chappaz – 6:42.354
- McKenna Merten – 7:09.341
Junior Men’s Finals Results
With twenty Junior men (well, teenagers really – the Junior field are all under 19 years of age) lining up at the start line, and just four seconds separating the fastest five riders from Saturday’s qualifying, it was always going to be some fiercely close racing during Sunday’s finals.
Canada’s Seth Sherlock came out of the gates first, laying down a blistering time of 4:52 that saw him in pole position for a good while. That was before fellow Canadians, Elliot Jamieson from the Norco Factory Team found another second on the track, and then Patrick Laffey pushed below the 4:50 barrier, after stitching together a clean run through the woods and down through the lower motorway section.
With the five quickest qualifiers lining up at the start gate, Laffey wasn’t going to get too comfortable.
UK lad Jamie Edmondson looked good early on, but fell short on the last three splits to finish two seconds down. Third fastest qualifier, Luke Mumford, also struggled with the woods section, but somehow managed to pull back time at the end to take the hot seat with a 4:46 run, with the crowd roaring as he crossed the line.
The Aussies followed, but like many others, Luke Meier-Smith lost time in the middle of the race track to slot into third, while Kye A’Hern finished with 4:51 on the clock. There were high hopes for Canadian Ethan Shandro, but a heavy crash in the woods lost him a lot of time, and he finished well outside of the top-10. That left the fast Frenchman, Thibaut Daprela as the last rider to come down the mountain, and an otherwise flawless run saw him put in five seconds over his qualifying time from the day before, taking the victory over Mumford.
- Thibaut Daprela – 4:45.455
- Luke Mumford – 4:46.324
- Patrick Laffey – 4:47.608
- Luke Meier-Smith – 4:47.869
- Lucas Cruz – 4:49.125
Missed out on some of the action? Then make sure you check out more coverage from the 2019 Fort William Cup event coverage right here!
