RESULTS - World Cup Downhill Lenzerheide - Mountain Bike News Story

Here at the sharp end of the season, Lenzerheide serves up a great test of both riders and bikes, with a fast, rough, and steep track that doesn't really let up from start to finish - and with the World Cup points race heating up, it all adds up to a very intense event. Qualifying was basically an all-French affair, but the clocks are set back to zero for finals and anything is possible when the start gate beeps go off. The Juniors wrapped up the morning session with Jackson Goldstone confirming that he is still the Junior Man to beat after his convincing win at Worlds last weekend in Val di Sole, followed shortly thereafter by Izabela Yankova who pulled off the same exact feat in the Junior Women's.

In the Elite Women's category, Vali Höll was able to avoid yet another final run crash, but she was perhaps being a bit too conservative as her time was immediately bested by Tahnee Seagrave who looked fast and committed despite battling a neck injury. Winner of World Champs last week, Myriam Nicole has all the momentum on her side and she showed us once again that she is the women to beat right now, taking the win by over 2 seconds and extending her lead in the World Cup overall standings. Bravo Pompon!

Notes from the Elite Men's race:

Early on, Andreas Kolb put down a smooth run leaving him in the hot seat with 20 riders still to go - about 4 seconds off Loris Vergier’s fastest qualifier. Brook MacDonald was 2nd at this point.
Greg Williamson got close, but lost time at the bottom to fade to third at the line.
Coulanges in touch! A good run from the World Champs silver medalist saw him take over the hot seat with a 2mn51.
Matt Walker - a good run from last year’s overall champ moves the needle to 2mn50!
Green splits for Angel Suarez, redemption for crashing out at Worlds last week? Just missed out on taking the lead by 0.16 seconds.
Luca Shaw ragdolls through the steep woods, as a hard compression caught him out and sent him over the bars! Luca got up and rolled down the hill.
Greg Minnaar! Looking fresh in his new rainbow stripe jersey, Minnaar was nursing a back injury and was a bit off pace here. With positions in the overall in play you know he wanted more than 8th at the line (19th at the end of the day).
Green at split 3 for Dakotah Norton! 77 kms/hour through the speed trap and the time to beat drops under 2mn50!
Into the top 10 qualifiers, and Reece Wilson in touch at all the splits! Green half way down, but Reece had to settle for 2nd as he crossed the finish line.
Finn on a flyer! Perfection through the rhythm jump section, the splits stayed green all the way down before a rear wheel slide in the chicane just before the finish line drop ended up costing him his hot seat ticket.
Laurie Greenland, down at the top splits but a fantastic middle section put him back on top! 2mn48, beating Vergier’s qualifier and things just got real. Awesome run from Laurie.
David Trummer, green at the early splits but only 6th at the line.
Thibaut Daprela, half a second up at split 2 and building as the run went on! Riding loose but with precision, Daprela hung it all out to take the lead by almost a whole second! Redemption for Worlds for this flying Frenchie? Still plenty more of those left at the top of the hill at this point!
Loic Bruni or Super Bruni, you never know from week to week. Despite riding with pretty serious leg pain after having been hospitalized earlier in the week (he even missed track walk!), he built more than a 1-second lead here with his trademark mix of aggression and smoothness - only 0.17 was left of that lead at the line, but that was an incredible run! Enough for the win?
3rd in qualifying, Danny Hart had a clean run but faded to 4th at the line. We know knew that we'd have a French winner...the question was, who would it be? And could it be a sweep of the top-3 spots?
Amaury Pierron, so much aggression! Only 0.5 back at the top splits, could he pull something special out at the bottom? 0.4 back at the line with a foot off the pedal before the last jump! 3rd at the line, and the French podium sweep was already a reality, with only Loris left up top! So tight, incredible racing!
Loris up by 0.2 at the 2nd split! Fast and calculated, Loris might have held back a bit too much as he dropped 0.6 by the next split! Back into green by 6 hundreds at the next one! Two more turns....0.19 up at the line!!! Vergier wins! 1-2-3-4 for the French, all within the same second! Incredible! Oh la la!