Supermountain Round Three, Scopello - Sunday Racing
Oct 1, 2012
It promised to be a wet day today and as day broke over Scopello this morning nobody was let down. It's hard to tell how much of the night it had rained for, but by the time people started arriving at the pits, it was belting down. The good news was that was that if you jumped on the chairlift and headed up to the start, you climbed out above the rain. There were even a few flashes of sunlight...
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 Another day, another moody, cloudy mountain shot... |
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| And then there was that rain. Plenty of it too. |
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| It's hard not to warm to Marco Fontana. He's come to play at a big mountain race, doesn't hang around and bought his mates with him. If he keeps on like that people will start accusing him of being fun, which would never do for a serious cross country racer... |
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| On first glance this 80s throwback skisuit may look a bit daft, but inside he's warm and dry and those colours are a welcome relief for photographers on a weekend when most of the riders are dressed in black from head to foot. Not as daft as you thought, eh? |
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| The chairlift here in Scopello is pretty brutal as far as these things go, you've got to move quickly to get on and off. All the riders should thank these two guys at the top too, who spent all morning standing there in the cold to pull their bikes off the lift for them. |
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| As I said, it's hard not to warm to Marco. |
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| There were some last minute preparations at the top, as well as getting the start area ready Cip had to tape off part of the meadow to stop people parking in the start straight. |
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| Manuel Ducci is all pro, he's made sure his entire team have these peak extensions to keep their goggles clear. |
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| There are no Monster girls here in Scopello, just race director Franco Monchiero. He may not be as pretty, but he's a better bet for making sure the race runs smoothly... |
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| The women's race gets going. It's a shame the field is so small this weekend, it'd be good to see more women taking part in these races. |
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| Valentina Macheda absolutely smashed the holeshot and powered away from the other girls at the start, but fell back to second in the first heat. |
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| Local lad Matteo Raimondi got one hell of a holeshot. Behind him are the series leader, the enduro national champion and an Olympic bronze medalist, that's not bad going for someone who hasn't even reached their 18th birthday. Unfortunately something happened on the way down and he ended up well out of the running by the end of the first heat. Davide Sottocornola went on to win and Marco Fontana held off series leader, Manuel Ducci, to claim second. That's also worth noting - the XC racer was battling bar-to-bar with some of the fastest enduro racers Italy has to offer on a track that suited bike handlers. Not much more needs to be said. |
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| The aftermath of the start... I'm still not sure how the fella crashed hard enough to do this on a fireroad section, but it must have been pretty brutal to do that kind of damage. |
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| After the start something unusual happened - the sun actually started breaking through in places... Unfortunately that meant the mud started drying and sticking to everything and anything. |
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| After crashing a couple of times in her first heat and dropping back to second, Caro Gehrig got everything right in the second heat and took the win and the overall on the day. |
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| Valentina took second place in the second heat, to make it a brace today and walked away the 2012 Supermountain ladies' champion. |
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| Manuel wasn't going to let Marco get the better of him twice in one day and took the second heat convincingly, giving him the overall today. |
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| It was two seconds for Marco, giving him second overall. |
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| This is what happened to Davide Sottocornola. After winning the first heat, his drivetrain got this stuck in it and he fell back a few places in the second heat. Iit gave Manuel enough of a gap to win the overall and the series title. |
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| So how was it today? We'll leave you to draw your own conclusions from the faces in the pits and the end of the day. |
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| So that's Supermountain done for 2012, Manuel Ducci and Valentina Macheda are the series champions. |
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| The sun even came out towards the end of the day, just in time to start drying the jetwashed bikes... |
So that's Supermountain's first season over and done with... The race season here in Italy is almost over, the last race of the season will be when Superenduro heads for Finale 21/22 October, it's kind of like the end of season party for enduro racing and is always good fun.
www.superenduromtb.com
