June 19/08 12:23 pm - MTB World Championships: Junior Men XC photos, report and full results

Posted by Editoress on 06/19/08
 

MTB World Championships Val di Sole, Italy

Coverage brought to you with the assistance of Velirium

Photos

Peter Sagan of Slovakia is the European mountain bike champion, finished second at the Cyclo-cross Worlds, and fourth at the Road Worlds last fall. Now, he is the Junior Mountain Bike champion. Obviously, this is one talented rider.

Sagan went to the front of the huge 102 rider field at the base of the first climb, taking Arnaud Jouffroy (France) with him. At the top of that climb they had a gap of 12 seconds on chaser Alexander Gehbauer (Austria), another favoured rider, and by the end of the first of five laps they were 30 seconds ahead of him.

Sagan then upped the pace again to drop Jouffroy, and was nearly 30 seconds clear two kilometres into the second lap. Gehbauer was still sitting third, just ahead of Matthias Rupp (Switzerland), but a broken derailleur at the top of the second climb put him out of the race, moving Rupp into the bronze medal spot.

This is how it would remain for the rest of the race, with Sagan steadily pulling away to win by over a minute and a half on Jouffroy, with Rupp at nearly three minutes, and fourth place Fabian Strecker (Germany) over five and a half minutes down.

Sagan also obliterated the fastest lap times of Elite riders Jean-Christophe Peraud (France) and Liam Killeen (Great Britain) from the Team Relay, with three laps under 19 minutes. He was the fastest every lap except the last one, when he slowed slightly to celebrate in the final 300 metres.

The top Canadian finisher was Evan Guthrie, in 45th place - the second last rider to avoid being lapped. Guthrie struggled with the fast start, dropping from 28th to 63rd by the top of the first climb. He started to recover later in the lap, moving up to 54th by the end of lap one, then to 49th the next lap and up to a high of 43rd in the third lap, before fading slightly to finish 45th.

"It's the toughest race I've ever done. I was on my fourth lap, going into my fifth, the winner was almost finishing his fifth lap. I was just like, 'Oh man, they are so fast'. But I just kept it steady and tried to work my way through."

Guthries is a first year Junior, so he hopes to be back next year. "I'll take away a lot of experience. I want to compare my times to winners, and hopefully come back stronger next year. I was glad to get top-50 ... I was really glad not to get pulled! I'm fairly happy, I just wish I could have gone a little harder in the last couple of laps."

Canada's two other riders in the race - Tyson Wagler and Jonathan Boucher - finished 53rd and 67th respectively, both one lap down on the winner.