It's a big weekend in Italy this week. Mass-start, marathon downhill has finally made it's way here. Apparently there's some kind of football game going on too, but we're the wrong people to ask about that... Supermountain was first trialled at the Enduro of Nations last year in Sauze d'Oulx, it went so well that the team behind Superenduro decided to run a three race series of it this year. To kick things off, they have descended on the south-western ski resort of Limone Piemonte. It's a town they like to come to when they want to launch big things - last year they had the first ever enduro National Champs here.
With a course covering 7km and going down 950 vertical metres, it's easy to see why they chose this spot. Starting in a high, alpine boulder field and finishing in the streets of the town below there's a bit of everything in there and it's going to be a technical and physical test for the riders. This isn't quite the same format as races like the Megavalanche - at the moment it's a new sport in Italy, so there aren't the thousands of entrants each year (yet) and to try and make the starts a little less intimidating they will begin with a climb to split the field slightly before the first bend. Today was an open qualifying session all day on a slightly shorter version of tomorrow's race track, with every run timed and the best ones giving riders their chance to pick their grid positions.
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 We tagged along with the Life Cycles team today to try and get a feel for this new format. They are (from the top left, going clockwise) Manuel Ducci, Valentina Macheda, Alessandro Seddaiu and Joesph Murachelli. |
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| There are plenty of familiar faces here, including defending Superenduro champion, Andrea Bruno. |
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| Insert your own cheap, number board-related joke here. |
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| Joseph Murachelli, keeping an eye on the Life Cycle team bikes. |
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| No cheap jokes here, Andrea Bruno has been put in as number 300 for this race. He did enough today to get on the first row of the grid and he's happy enough with that and he's got the size and strength to muscle his way as far forward as he wants. |
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| With that much vertical to play with, there's only one proper way to get to the top... |
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| Joseph and Alessandro couldn't wait as soon and as they reached the top they tore straight off towards the finish in the valley below. |
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| Manuel stayed up near the top for a bit longer to refine his lines. |
Ride on-board with Manuel for his run to take second in qualifying:
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| The start of the qualifying course was high, alpine meadow with a course taped into it. |
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| It was full gas through those meadows, spinning out, full aero tuck-kinda full gas. |
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| There was a fair bit of dust on the ground too, which was a welcome change after the way the weather has been so far this year. |
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| From the meadow, riders then dropped into a wooded section, blasting along an old streambed and railing the corners |
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| As a mountain bike journalist you get to see lots of people doing hardcore things on bikes: world cup downhill racing, competition freeriding, blind enduro racing. But this gets some kind of prize for the most hardcore thing this year - bar-ends in a tough gravity race. There's a whole world of organ damage waiting to happen there. Just look at the square edges on those things. |
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| Coming out of the woods, it was more high-speed singletrack, with some awkward rock sections and corners thrown in for good measure. Some people made it look easier than others.... |
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| It's not exactly reassuring to see a memorial to two, young sisters who were killed along the trail (in 1947, admittedly). |
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| On the lower sections of the trail there were a few sprints to link the singletrack together. |
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| There was an abandoned hamlet to pass though too. |
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| Flat-out, high-speed sections seem to be a theme here in Limone and as you got nearer to the town the trail ran along the crest of a ridge, Straight along it, trying to hold it as wide open as you dared in the loose, dusty conditions. |
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| Pietro Caire is a bit gutted this weekend as his brother, Carlo, is out at Windham this weekend (he missed qualifying by about three places). "Next year" is his simple answer. |
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| It must have been tough marshaling today as the temperature sailed into the thirties and not every marshal point had a way to escape the sun. This guy had a fairly unique way of dealing with that problem. |
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| As the 7km drew to an end there as one last meadow before the finish. Most of the fast guys were taking this cut through the long grass... |
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| ...but Manuel decided it'd be more fun just launch into it. There's no lip here, just a vague compression and some brute power from Manuel. |
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| Not everyone made it down cleanly today, although the medical crews were fairly quiet. Will it be the same tomorrow though? |
So there we are... Supermountain has started. Tomorrow morning is the big show though - 20 man, mass-starts into the tough boulder field higher up the mountain. Nobody knows quite how it's going to play out, but we're excited to find out. With a start that high, here's hoping the weather is on it's best behaviour too.
www.superenduromtb.com 
