Hot damn, what a race Maribor put on. The rain stayed away as the track got ever faster and rougher for finals day. Here’s what went down.
It would be the heat and the dust rather than watching the forecast for rain that would bother most riders in Slovenia this weekend. Maribor offered the shortest track of the year so far but made up for it with some super exciting racing.
Riders looked to be struggling with the physicality of the bone dry Maribor track, with most time to be won or lost in the lower few sectors. Being back at the top two splits didn’t necessarily mean a slow lower half, despite it being a relatively short track.
Junior Women
Canyon Collective FMD’s Phoebe Gale found the time when it mattered, slicing a good eleven seconds off her qualifying time. Canada’s Gracey Hemstreet posted an almost identical time to her qualifier but with everyone else upping their game, she’d have to settle for fifth.
Izabela Yankova was just 0.791 back in second, with Spanish National Champion Aina Gonzalez Grimau in third.
Junior Men
Jordan Williams would have to settle for second place as Jackson Goldstone would shrug off his massive timed training crash to take the win by just 0.387 seconds. A mirror image of the Les Gets podium was rounded out by Lachlan Stevens-McNab.
Elite Women
Despite laying down a heater, Eleonora Farina would have to settle for second behind a flying Myriam Nicole who made good her race run in crash in Les Gets to bag herself her first World Cup win since the first round of last year’s visit to Lousa.
Elite Men
Take a bow Loris Vergier. After becoming the man in 2020, some bad luck would see if battling mechanicals when it mattered. He’d take both the qualifying and finals win by a relatively hefty 1.755 seconds. It seemed the time was to be lost in the final sectors but Vergier would only increase his lead from top to bottom.
Les Gets winner Thibaut Daprela extends his overall points haul with a second.
Laurie Greenland was loose as a spruce goose as to be expected, slotted into third.
The GOAT looked calm and collected but unhappy, unsurprisingly, to finish fourth.
Loic Bruni admitted to struggling all week so was content to round out the top 5.
Benoit Coulanges let it all hang out and busted his way into the hot seat with a massive bottom few sectors, doing the opposite compared to the rest of the field. With a puncture in qualifying, he’d occupy the hot seat for a fair while, to finish sixth.
BIG shout to Dan Slack for not backing down in finals, pushing hard to finish 10th.
Full results from the third round of the UCI Downhill World Cup can be found here.