Today was a big day for enduro. For the first time in the Enduro of Nations' six year history the French have been beaten. Well, sort of... In the individual race, the Superenduro PRO race, Jerome Clementz dominated, but as he's not on the French national team this year it sort of doesn't count. In fact, the top three places in the individual race were all held by Frenchmen (Nico Vouilloz and Nicolas Lau were second and third) and none of them were racing for France, which is slightly embarrassing for the country. But in the team competition the French were beaten and it wasn't the Italians like most people expected it would be - it was the British. Admittedly the French weren't helped by time penalties on Saturday for missing a checkpoint in the paddock, but that's racing.
 |
 After yesterday's weather, this is a photo few people were confident of seeing from today - sunshine and dust. Andrea Bruno came away with fourteenth overall this weekend, but he seemed happier than he's been in a while this evening and was clearly enjoying being out on the trail today. He was the only rider who managed to find enough traction to jump out of this loose, flat corner. |
 |
| Al Stock is another rider who has had a mixed weekend. On Friday he hit his head so hard in practice he took himself to the hospital as his vision went blurry, Then there was the blown shock, destroyed seatpost, comedy replacement shock... you get the idea, right? To understand how well he's going at the moment, even on a weekend this bad he still wound up sixth against the strongest field of the season. |
 |
| Joe Barnes backed up strong riders by Dan Atherton and Al Stock with a ninth place to push the Brits into the lead in the team competition. |
 |
| Nicolas Quere led the charge for the French team, grabbing a solid ninth, five places ahead of his more experienced teammate Remy Absalom. Without his one minute penalty on Saturday he would have leap-frogged all the way up to fourth, pushing Dan Atherton back to fifth... |
 |
| Dan Atherton wasn't particularly happy with fourth place in the individual competition, but being beaten by Jerome, Nico and the rising star of French enduro is not something to be too ashamed of. |
 |
| Jerome Clementz did the hard work yesterday and a charging Nico Vouilloz could only cut his lead down from 36 to 22 seconds today. In a race where the top ten are split by around two minutes (and a handful more riders would be in there too, were it not for penalties), that's a pretty impressive victory. |
 |
| Switzerland was under-represented this weekend as they have a lot of fast enduro riders who were elsewhere. Florian Golay flew the flag for them and landed a respectable fifteenth overall. |
 |
| Mark Scott enjoyed his first Superenduro PRO race so much two weeks ago that he decided to sack off the World Cup at Val d'Isere this weekend and come to race here at Sauze. He was rewarded with a solid 18th place. |
 |
| Andrea Pirrazolli didn't have a good weekend - the only consolation of finishing 69th are the obvious jokes. |
 |
| Joseph Murachelli never quite got over his smash yesterday and dropped out of the top 50. He still always look aggressive on the bike though. |
 |
| Max Schumann was one of the few Germans who made it over this year. Here he is proving that you can ride hard on 650B wheels. |
 |
| Jamie Nicholl will have been disappointed at being three and a half minutes off the pace (and he picked up a further minute in penalties too), but a top 20 in this field is not to be under-estimated. |
 |
| This afternoon it was all about Supermountain, mass-start racing. In the first race the national teams went head-to-head down a modified route for special stage eight. Alex Lupato took the holeshot. |
 |
| Unfortunately Dan Atherton overtook him on the fireroad down to the singletrack... |
 |
| ...and built up an unassailable lead. Nicolai Florian tried to chase him down, but couldn't make it stick. |
 |
| Meanwhile the rest of the field were left to fight it out amongst themselves. |
 |
| The top 100 riders outside the national competition were treated to a bonus Supermountain race too. Manuel Ducci took the holeshot and didn't look back. |
The top ten in the men's individual race were:
1. Jerome Clementz
2. Nico Vouilloz
3. Nicolas Lau
4. Dan Atherton
5.Martin Maes
6. Al Stock
7. Nicolas Quere
8. Davide Sottocornola
9. Joe Barnes
10. Manuel Ducci
One name from that list we want to know more about is Martin Maes. We don't even know what he looks like, but a 15 year-old from a country unlikely as Belgium placing in the top five at the biggest race of the year is something pretty special. In the women's race, Anka Martin made it two years in a row, coming from behind to pip Morgane Such for the win.
And with that a great weekend of racing was over. For the Enduro of Nations it's not the end though as the second leg of the competition will be at Valloire next weekend and it's all still to play for (unfortunately we won't be there as there as some things in this world that are more important than mountain bikes, not many, but some). The French will surely want to press their home turf advantage, but the Brits were strong this weekend and the Italians would definitely have been hoping for more...
We need to thank
Riders Refuge in Morzine for helping out when we needed somewhere to stay on the way back home. Cheers guys!
www.superenduromtb.com 
