June 20/08 2:38 am - MTB World Championships: U23 Men XC photos, report and full results

Posted by Editoress on 06/20/08
 

MTB World Championships Val di Sole, Italy

Coverage brought to you with the assistance of Velirium

Photos

Nino Schurter ended the Swiss drought of three days at the Mountain Bike World Championships by regaining the Under-23 men's title he relinquished last year to Jakob Fuglsang of Denmark. The six lap race was down to two men by the middle of the first lap - Schurter and this year's breakthrough rider, Burry Stander (South Africa). Canada's Raphael Gagne lived up to the promise he had made to the Quebec media of a top-ten finish by scoring a very impressive seventh place.

Schurter and Stander have been the class of the U-23 field all season, finishing on the podium at World Cups against elite riders. The duo looked like they were in a two-up time trial as they came through the finish line at the end of the opening lap. The pair had a gap of 11 seconds on Matthias Fluckiger (Switzerland), with a group led by Stephane Tempier (France) already 25 seconds down.

The pair seemed content to work together for the first four laps, opening a gap of nearly two and a half minutes on Fluckiger by this point, with the rest of the field at least a minute further back and fading. After swapping the front for nearly three quarters of the race, Schurter decided it was time to go, attacking twice in the second half of lap five before dropping his South African rival for good. Starting the final lap, he had 24 seconds on Stander, which was extended to 41 by the finish. Fluckiger came in a distant third, 3:46 down.

Gagne started out slower, at his own pace to finish the first lap in 13th place, a position he held onto for the second lap before beginning to start a move forward. In the second half of the race he really began to drive, jumping from 11th at the end of lap four to seventh in the fifth lap, when he joined a group of five looking to contest sixth place.

"I think I did my most intelligent race of the season, and even since the last Worlds. A lot guys started too fast, with the heat and the steep climbs here. I started at my pace and I kept it for the whole race; I think my lap times were almost all the same."

"My strategy was to start not too far back, and make up some spaces on the descent, because that is more my strength, and then hammer some more in the second half of the race."

"In the fifth lap we caught them, myself and the Netherlands rider [ Frank Beemer], so there were five of us. No one wanted to work except me and the Swiss guy [Pascal Meyer]. The guy from Argentina [Dario Alejandro Gasco] attacked, and I couldn't respond, he was too strong at climbing. But on the last long climb I just opened the machine, even though I was cramping, I went as hard as I could and got a gap, and then sprinted into the finish."

"The last two Worlds I had problems, so this is almost the only [international] result I have in the world for the last three years. I'm super happy about that."

Injury List update: DH rider Charles-Alexandre Dube will not compete in tomorrow's event as he crashed during the seeding run yesterday.