Qualifying in Loudenvielle at round five of the UCI Downhill World Cup landed a day early to dodge the forecast thunderstorm.
Here’s who went fastest in Loudenvielle… No spoilers here.
Junior Women
Sacha Earnest clearly loved the fast top and steep lower sections of Loudenvielle as she built a comfortable lead over fellow Kiwi and current Junior World Champion Erice Van Leuven. Some six seconds adrift on second place would be Valentina Roa Sanchez. The Kiwis are streets ahead. Earnest would have been in the top 6 in Elite Women…
Junior Men
Ryan Pinkerton goes fastest again backing up his finals win in Andorra. He’d be 1.4 up on the omnipresent Nathan Pontvianne who would be a whisker ahead of Christian Hauser in third. Six seconds separate the top ten and 2nd to 5th are on the same second.
Pinkerton’s time would put him top 25 in Elite Men. No messing about.
Elite Women
Your current Elite World Champion Vali Höll wasn’t about to let her second place in Andorra get to her and set about putting over a second into Nina Hoffman in France. Five seconds was the gap back to third place Marine Cabirou which shows just how fast the front two are.
Cami Balanche would have no doubt pushed the Austrian and the German. Happy healing Cami!
Elite Men
Will Sunday finally see the tall, quiet Frenchman Benoit Coulanges finally take his maiden World Cup win? He saw off a flying Loic Bruni who has a score to settle for sure. Thibaut Daprela would round out the top three the same margin from Bruni as Bruni would be from Coulanges.
Three and a half seconds separate the top 10. Blink wrong and you’ll be way off the pace.
