What Happened in the Val di Sole World Cup?
This weekend, Val di Sole hosted the first triple-event of the 2010 Mountain Bike World Cup. The Italian region hosted the World Cup Championships in 2008, and this year it hosted the fifth of six events in cross-country, downhill, and four-cross. The men’s cross-country was won by Nino Schurter and the women’s by Maja Wloszczowska.
Last weekend in Champery, Switzerland, Schurter’s Swisspower teammate Florian Vogel won the men’s cross-country, but in Val di Sole it was once again a two-man race between Schurter, the world champion, and Julien Absalon, the defending overall leader. Schurter was the victor in the final sprint between the two contenders for the third time this year, and is now the World Cup leader.
The six-lap, 6.3km race course was peppered with steep climbs, which splintered the race; less than half of the starters finished on the same lap as Schurter. By the halfway point, only Absalon and Vogel were challenging the eventual winner.
"It was very good for both Florian and I to be together," agreed Schurter. "I think Julien was actually the strongest rider out there today, but we were able to work together against him. I knew that the place to attack was at the last feed zone, because there was nowhere to pass after that."
The final two laps of the race were difficult for the nervous Absalon, in a two-against-one situation. He dropped Vogel in the last lap, but Schurter stuck to his wheel and took the lead in the final 1.5kms.
"It was two against one, and they were very good together. I tried to attack a number of times, but on these steep climbs it is impossible to get a gap, you cannot get enough power to get away. The feed zone was the place where you had to be in front, but Nino was just a little bit faster and was able to get there first," said Absalon.
Schurter now stands 26 points ahead, with Jaroslav Kulhavy in third place, 120 points behind Absalon.
The standing for the women’s cross-country competition have been very unstable. In five events, there have been five different winners, the most recent, Maja Wloszczowska taking the victory in Val di Sole. Last weekend in Champery, Nathalie Schneitter won the race, and her teammate Eva Lechner took the overall lead ahead of Catharine Pendrel, who regained it in this weekend’s event in Italy by finishing second behind Wloszczowska. The overall lead in the women’s competitions has not yet remained in the same hands for two consecutive events – a pattern Pendrel hopes to break.
"When Maja came up to me, it was both good and bad,” said Pendrel. “Good because we could work together on the flat sections, and bad, because obviously she was riding really well. But I'm really happy to take back the World Cup leader's jersey, and now I just want to hold it through the final race."
Wloszczowska won her first stage in the second World Cup of her career, on the same course as the men’s cross-country, but suffered from much more hot sun in the open sections.
"It was my aim to get on the podium," said Wloszczowska, "I really like track here. "But I did not expect to win. It feels really good to win my second World Cup (the first was in Schladming, Austria, in 2008). I got to Catharine on second to last lap and we worked together. So I have to thank her for my win."
Pendrel dropped to third after being plagued by mechanical problems in Champery, but now leads again, 54 points ahead of Lechner and 59 ahead of Willow Koerber. After a three weekend break, the sixth cross-country, downhill, and four-cross events will be held in Windham, New York, and the championships will be held from August 31st to September 5th in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Quebec, Canada.
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