July 28/24 11:24 am - Isabella Holmgren 17th in Olympic XCO
Posted by Editoress on 07/28/24
Pauline Ferrand Prevot took a home win for France on Saturday in the women's XCO, adding the one title missing from her palmares - Olympic champion. Haley Batten (USA) fought back from a flat tire to take silver, just ahead of 2016 Olympic champion Jenny Rissveds (Sweden). Canada's Isabella Homgren, the youngest rider in the race, battled up from a last row starting position to finish 17th in a sprint to the line.
Ferrand Prevot came into the race as one of the strongest favourites, and quickly established a lead. Her team mate Loana Lecomte set the pace on the first lap, followed by Puck Pieterse (Netherlands), Ferrand Prevot and Laura Stigger (Austria). On Lap 2, on the main climb, Ferrand Prevot opened the throttle and rode away from the rest of the field, setting the fastest splits and increasing her lead on every lap afterwards, to eventually win by three minutes.
Behind, Stigger was dropped and Rissveds began moving up, as did Batten and Alessandra Keller (Switzerland). Pieterse and Lecomte fought through Lap 3 before the French woman dropped back to join Rissveds, Batten and Stigger. The French rider then had a terrible crash in a rock garden descent on Lap 4, putting her out of the race, while Batten flatted, getting going again in eighth place.
It looked like the first two spots were set until Pieterse flatted late in Lap 5, leaving Rissveds and Stigger in the silver and bronze positions. The Dutch woman would finally get back in the race in seventh, eventually improving to fourth by the finish, 21 seconds out of the medals. However, Batten was coming up impressively quickly to rejoin the chase, while Stigger began to falter after her fast start.
Going into the final two laps, it was Batten and Rissveds to fight for the final two spots on the podium, and they rode neck-and-neck until the final kilometre, when Batten attacked on a climb, opening a small gap, but enough to take silver, the best ever U.S. result in women's mountain bike.
Holmgren, starting in the last row, moved to the top-20 by mid-lap 2 and then as high as 16th before getting into a battle with Nina Benz (Germany) in the final two laps. It came down to a sprint, with the German less than a bike length ahead.
"It was a super tough race, everyone was hammering the whole time," said Holmgren. "I kept fighting until the end, so I'm happy about that.I didn't think I would be here at the start of the year, so to have the chance to race at the Olympics is pretty awesome. I raced as hard as I could and gave it my all."
We also asked Isabella about her first experience racing against the Elite-level riders at the international level. "I'm a first year U23 and I haven't raced at the elite level internationally, other than a few C1 races, so it was definitely a bit of a different experience. There's always somebody that you are racing against and they're all so strong, and I look up to all of them. I'm really glad I was able to race and to see how hard they go. This was definitely a bit of a learning Games, but I still went out and competed as hard as I could. Now I have more motivation to hopefully be at the next ones."
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