Click HERE for a gallery of images from this event.
As mentioned yesterday, there are few places on this course to pass; the first corner is the hole shot, but with the second corner coming up rapidly, there's still time and space to work in a pass. After that, barring a crash of some kind, you can forget about anyone moving past the leader. Needless to say, there was a bit of battling heading into the first and second corners.
In the men’s field, Brian Lopes was an unlikely first round wash out—stranger things have happened according to him, but his rear wheel QR skewer came opened in the first heat and his rear wheel came loose. 4X is a game of inches and split seconds, and with a rear wheel loose, Lopes was pretty much insta-screwed, so scratch one old guy… Dan Atherton, too, barely made it out of the first round after posting the fastest qualifier, but his poor finish in heat one gave him the outside starting gate, which was pretty much a death sentence for anyone with ambitions of advancing onwards—on this course, there’s just too much distance to try close down as you come around the first gate; if it’s still tight coming out of the first corner, you might gain a place or two in the second corner if you’re in lane 3, but lane 4 was the pretty much the dead zone.
From there, the racing was pretty uneventful; a few crashes-including one nasty one in the finishing straight (nope, I missed out on who went down—I was at the top of the course, but he went out on a stretcher, so definitely not a good wreck). As the race went on, it looked as if it were going to be a showdown between Cedric Gracia, Lara De Alvarez, Guido Tschugg, and Romain Saladini, but Cedric and Romian both were relegated to the small final, with Gracia taking the win over Saladini, Mickael Deldycke, and Jurg Meijer, while in the finals, it was Lara de Alvarez taking the win over Guido Tschugg, Johnannes Fishbach, and Tomas Slavik.
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Fot the ladies, without Jill Kintner or Tara Llanes in the mix, it seems to be a battle for second behind Anneke Beerten. In this case, it looked as if MS Intense team mate Mio Suemasa might be stepping it up as she qualified 4rth yesterday, but in the quarter final she had a nasty wreck on the opening straight, which pretty much took her out; hopefully she’s back for the DH tomorrow. The final was Anneke, Melissa Buhl, Fionn Griffiths, and Anita Mocik, with Anneke easily taking the victory, with Mocik in second, Griffiths in third, and Melissa Buhl in Fourth.
The first World Cup downhill will be tomorrow, and all eyes are on Sam and Sabrina to dominate.
Click HERE for a gallery of images from this event.
Colin Meagher
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