UCI Downhill World Cup Round One Recap and Season Preview
Ah, the luck of the French. That’s the saying, isn’t it? Regardless, Alexandre Fayolle must have been praying to the weather gods to take home his first World Cup win on home soil. The men’s race in the south of France was dictated by rainy conditions, but the women’s race stayed dry allowing Great Britain’s Rachel Atherton to take the win in a dominating fashion.
Before we get to the action, let’s take a look at the track. The top of the track sits at 2,900 feet and descends 1,400 feet in 1.6 miles. The track consists of three main sections. From the gate, riders plunge into big, steep rock sections. One, named The Wall, descends multiple rock ledges into a tight left hand corner challenging even the best riders. The middle of the track is straight and fast with some jumps. Then the track takes riders into the woods with some sweeping turns and a couple of road gaps. The final section drops riders into a rocky gully, plummeting into the finish corral.
Here’s what went down, starting with the women’s race. Red Bull only shows the top ten women racers on the live broadcast, so that’s what I am going off of for this recap. As mentioned above, the track stayed dry and dusty for the women. The wind did play a factor though. This was evident in Morgane Charre’s run as she did not hit the big road gaps, because the wind was blowing hard. Charre set an early leading time of 3:39.486.
Miranda Miller crushed that time, putting 7.292 seconds into the French women’s time. The next racer to put up a time gap was Myriam Nicole, slicing 4.408 seconds off Miller’s time. Tracey Hannah had an excellent run with positive splits all the way down the track. Hannah went into the hot seat with a 3.777 second gap.
Rachel Atherton was the second place qualifier on Friday, put had the fastest run of the day to take the win with a time of 3:21:430. It was evident that Atherton was fastest through the top sections, but she lost time on the bottom section of the track. First place qualifier Tahnee Seagrave slotted into third place to round out the top three steps of the podium.
Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
WC Round 1 Women’s Podium: 1. Rachel Atherton, 2. Tracey Hannah, 3. Tahnee Seagrave, 4. Myriam Nicole, 5. Manon Carpenter.
The weather has not been such a factor in a world cup race in recent times. Alexandre Fayolle set the fastest time of 2:52.758, and none of the top 50 qualified racers could beat it, due to slippery track conditions.
Early on, it was the wind that slowed riders down on the straight middle section of the track. Then, The top started to get slippery, but the bottom stayed somewhat dry. Eventually, the whole track was slippery and not possible to set a winning time.
By the top 20 racers or so, you could barely see the start hut. Proof of the crazy slippery conditions were Aaron Gwin and Danny Hart. Both of the two top riders crashed multiple times in their runs. I can’t stress enough how rare it is that Fayolle won; he should have gotten destroyed by the top ten qualified riders. The weather held off the big guns until the next race.
Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
WC Round 1 Men’s Podium: 1. Alexandre Fayolle, 2. Mark Wallace, 3. Marcelo Gutierrez, 4. Florent Payet, 5. Connor Fearon.
So, who will be successful this season? For the women, it’s really hard to bet against Rachel Atherton, so I’m not going to. Atherton will continue to dominate in 2017. We will have to see if she continues her win streak from last season, where she went undefeated. She is just on another level from the rest of the women’s field.
Any of the top ten women are a podium threat, but I’m looking at Miranda Miller as a rider to watch. Miller was a privateer in season’s past, but this year she has a factory ride on the Specialized Gravity team. She also competes in the Enduro World Series. With a focus on the World Cup calendar, I think we could see her take a trip to the podium.
It’s harder to nail down a top rider in the men’s field, because the talent pool is so deep. Since this weekend’s race was dictated by the weather, we can look at the qualifying results to see who is going fast. Qualifying is a good measure, however is not always accurate as some riders chose to tone their pace down a bit.
The top three qualifiers were Loris Vergier, Loic Bruni and Luca Shaw, respectively. I think we can see all of these riders mixing it up near the top of the results page. They are all young, with Shaw only 20 years old, so it will be interesting to see how they fare compared to more experienced racers.
The next four qualifiers were Danny Hart, Aaron Gwin, Greg Minnaar, and Troy Brosnan. Gwin is the 2016 overall champion, and Minnaar has years and years of experience. All of these riders were in the top ten overall for the 2016 season, so it really is hard to say who will do well.
Two riders to watch in the men’s field are Connor Fearon of Australia, and Neko Mulally from the East Coast of the United States. Both riders have been on the come up for years now. Everybody remembers Mullaly’s savage 2014 world championships run in Norway, and Fearon is a speedy Aussie looking to give Troy Brosnan a run for his money. We will see how these young riders fare over the season.
The next downhill world cup is not until June 3-4 in Fort William, Scotland. The first round of the cross country world cup is May 20-21 in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic. Watch this blog site for more coverage from the world of cycling. #RideWithRyan.