Supermountain Round Two, Pila - Sunday Racing
Sep 16, 2012
I thought I'd ruined it for everyone. This season it's rained at every race Superenduro have put on, not always heavy, but it has made an appearance. Last night I wrote that the forecast was good for today and woke up to a thick, grey blanket of cloud lying over the Aosta valley. As an Englishman I should have known better than to tempt fate with the weather like that. As we rattled and bumped our way up the fireorad to the start, everyone clearly upset with me for ruining our run of perfect, blue skies here in Pila, something magic revealed itself to us...
 |
 ...what was depressing below was a sea of clouds stretching out across the valley. Above it some of the highest mountains in Europe stood tall. There were a lot of cloud shots floating around from Hafjell this week. I'll see those and raise them this... |
 |
| There's the Matterhorn again. Do you need any more caption here really? |
 |
| Yes, this really is a trail. You can follow this crest all the way along, Corrado Herin took us down here the other evening (yes, those of you who guessed Corrado were right), with no warning or no heads up that we'd be riding along the top a 2,000 meter drop. It was terrifying and incredible in equal measures. |
 |
| With mass-start races, there's a lot of time at the top while they sort out the starting positions, everyone passed the time differently. |
 |
Finally,
ready to go. |
 |
| Supermountain races start on a slight upslope to make the starts less intimidating. Of course, if you're at the front and going for the holeshot the gloves are off. Manuel Ducci makes contact with Michael Schaerer. |
 |
| While Michael and Manuel fought it out, there was chaos behind. |
 |
| Although Micheal claimed the holeshot, he couldn't hold off Manuel's power on the first straight and once they got round the first real corner and onto the fireroad, Manuel started to open up a gap. He held that all the way to the bottom to claim the win in the first heat. |
 |
| Behind them, the rest of the field piled into the first corner. |
 |
| The women raced separately and France's Morgane Such took the holeshot. |
 |
| Morgane lead down the fireroad, but Switzerland's Natalie Schneitter overtook her on the first climb and pushed on to win the first heat |
 |
| If you look closely you can just make out the leading women climbing towards the little hut on the fireroad, but really, this is just an excuse to shoehorn in another shot of Mont Blanc above that sea of clouds. |
 |
| Manuel led out the second heat in the men's race. |
 |
| Manuel managed to hold of Switzerland's Lukas Anrig to win the second heat and the overall on the day. Davide Sottocornoloa fell back in the running today, so Manuel now has the series lead too, with the final race in two weeks' time at Scopello. |
 |
| Vittorio Gambirasio put in a solid ride today. |
 |
| Coming into this meadow was a high, sweeping left-hander up the bank. |
 |
| All the way through the field, everyone seemed to be pushing hard. |
 |
| None harder than this fella. I guess you should respect the commitment, but is it really worth trashing your rim like this just to keep going? |
 |
| By the time she reached this meadow about a third of the way down, Natalie Schneitter had a comanding lead in the second heat. She's now won a Superenduro Sprint race and a Supermountain race in only two weeks. Although she's better known as an elite XC racer, switching over to enduro and marathon DH for a few races seems to have gone well for her. |
 |
| Morgane Such grabbed second again in the second heat, outgunned by the much bigger Swiss girl. |
 |
| Valentina Macheda put in a solid ride for third overall and the honour of fastest Italian women this weekend. |
 |
| If there's one thing this weekend has proved, it's that putting on a race everyone can enjoy doesn't mean you need to use flat trails. These girls were a way behind the top ladies, but they seemed to be having a lot of fun and that's the most important thing of all... |
So that wraps up another great weekend of racing and the second ever Supermountain race. It seems to be growing nicely as people get their heads around the series and the organisation is the usual perfection you would expect from Superenduro. Oh, and no, it didn't rain, so I'm allowed to come to the next race...
www.superenduromtb.com
)
