Les Gets Downhill World Cup Mega Slideshow.

Well, the rumours are true, the Les Gets World Cup Downhill is absolutely bananas on finals day and has to be seen to be believed.

Finals day in Les Gets started cool and moist, very moist. Overnight rain slackened a touch but didn’t let up until the Elite Men took to the track.

Just like the weather forecast in Les Gets, there were no sure bets on who would take the win today.

Photos by Pete Scullion.

Above: Fair play to the marshals this weekend, they’ve stood on a soaking wet hill, and everyone of them we met was polite and helpful whenever we encountered them. Races don’t happen without marshals and often go overlooked.

Below: Last practice indicated that finals was going to be a soggy one. The rapidly drying track riders met in Q2 the previous day was a thing of the past. Big Benoit Coulanges would hope to recreate his famous win here alongside two other Frenchmen either side of him on the podium.

Below: Norco Race Division’s Gracey Hemstreet looked like she was riding a track at home for last practice. Fast, smooth and looking comfortable despite the miserable conditions. She was on Pete’s list to take the top spot once the clart had settled.

Below: Major props to Heather Wilson this weekend. She took a step back from racing, snapped her downhill bike the day before driving to Les Gets with her dad Craig. Got a hook up via the legends at Team High Country, qualified 5th and got stuck into a filthy finals. Time to reset and go again for World Champs.

Below: Marie Rosa Jensen would not have the best day out today. Two and a half seconds up at split one, she’d take a dive in the root-strewn upper woods and hit the deck, settling for 7th place, some 53 seconds back.

Below: Finals day summed up in a photo. The woods were minging. If the roots didn’t get you, the slimey mud would do its level best. Full mud spikes were pretty much standard issue all weekend. Mechanics were sick of washing bikes.

Below: Commencal-MucOff have a knack of hiring fast French juniors that turn into even faster Elites. Max Alran is the latest of this crop. He’d put four seconds into Asa Vermette and he didn’t even look like he was breaking a sweat. Max’s winning time was a whisker faster than Ronan Dunne’s too.

Below: This race was in France, if you hadn’t already gathered.

Below: Vali will be kicking herself. World Cup series leader without a win in her pocket, she won qualifying with a fair margin over Hemstreet. She was up at the first three splits then lost three and a half seconds between splits three and four, then lost another two before the finish. Not a good day in the office but she’ll get the chance to defend those stripes soon enough.

Below: Cometh the hour… Gracey had looked composed all week. Making light work of the treacherous conditions. As the track failed to dry, she’d take the bull by the horns and post her third win of the season.

Below: As the Elite Men hit the track, the fans thronged the hoardings and the commentary quickly got drowned out by the din of chainsaws and vuvuzelas. The racket was unlike anything this photographer had witnessed and will take some processing.

Below: Laurie Greenland snuck into Q1 despite a crash in his run and slotted neatly into 11th come finals. The Syndicate legend hasn’t had it all his own way recently but the pace is building and a happy Lozza is a dangerous man indeed.

Below: Andi Kolb might have been the first man to go under four minutes, but it was the big Belgian Martin Maes who bumped him off the hotseat by 0.11. It looked like the YT Mob man was going to do it again but Orbea FMD had other ideas.

Below: The closer it got to Remi Thirion’s run, the louder the fans got and the lower the visibility. Chainsaws could be heard in all directions. Flares and smoke were going off everywhere, sometimes in planned Tricolore waves but sometimes as and when the alcohol dictated. The security earned their pay as they did their best to hold back the horde.

Below: It wasn’t to be another fairy tale for Coulanges despite a concerted effort in the last split to drag himself up from the low 20s to the mid teens on the results sheet.

Below: The crowd erupted as SuperBruni took to the track. There’s not much to dislike about the French superstar, but six seconds back will have him working out how to make it good in Champery in two weekend’s time. This guy was a born winner and thrives for the Rainbow Stripes.

Below: Ladles and jellyspoons, Ronan Dunne. The Irishman looked like he was revelling in the muck in last practice and his run showed that he had put his series of fairly heinous crashes behind him. All the splits were green and he held it all the way to the bottom.

Below: What it means. Dunne put down a heater in finals and came away almost three seconds the better on Maes. This was a champion’s ride in the most miserable of conditions.

Below: The small Irish contingent in Les Gets were over the moon for yer man.

Below: We have all seen the pictures and video of the Les Gets finish corral carnage but experiencing it first hand is like nothing else. As soon as it was clear Thirion wasn’t going to win, the fans were on track, charging headlong towards the podium.