Video: Manon vs Rachel - The Battle of Leogang

 then clinched it in the last tech section! even though her line appeared a bit slower! so crazy!

 my take is that rachel is technically faster, but not up to the fitness of manon quite yet due to her virus break

 Rachel is a beast but better watch out for Manon this year. Really a testament to how far the British DH scene has come. Olympic committee should take notice this,,, I hope.

 this was way cool to watch! if you count it out, manon came from about 3seconds behind to 3seconds up just from that motorway section. just goes to show you how much fitness really reallllly matters!

 How about how Rach went for the crowd pleasers (jumps) as Manon just pedaled around them. Wasted time vs gained time. Rach should take note of that for the next round as we can see some of Manon's tactics.

 rachel has also trying to get back to form from an illness of some sort, right? the fitness would definitely come into play there.

 rachel moped the floor on the first halve, but after that, manon crushed her.... we need more of these, definitely

 The jumps aren't just crowd pleasers. Some of the riders were using them to great effect to pump down the landing...

 Yeah the faster line was definitely to miss the wooden jumps in the motorway section and use the table to be able to pump on the downslope. You could really see how much quicker Manon was in that section and the additional speed she was carrying before the wallride.

 yip - jumps definitely not crowd pleasers...greg, loic and ratboy all took the jumps as i recall

 not positive, but im pretty sure ratboy went around them too.

personally, i feel like features like that should be mandatory. sure it may be faster to go around, but whats the point of adding jumps just to have people skip them entirely? also, while you could say its just "line choice", i feel like youre riding a slightly different course at that point

 Rachel is recovering from her virus, left her pretty much bed ridden for about 6 weeks so her fitness is massively off par at the moment. She kept up the same pace you saw at the start of the video all the way through the runs last year, just goes to show how absolutely unstoppable she still is when ill, let alone in full physical form!

 I'll bet this is hard for Rachel to watch. Being up so much and losing 6 seconds because she was sick for 6 weeks? That sucks!

 @Lester22291 For some it's faster to scrub the jumps and get speed off the down slopes, for others it's faster to miss them out and pump them. Remember going round isn't necessarily quicker as you have a lot more pumping to do to stay on the ground. Personal preference, no point making people stick to one line, they're features on the course just like any rock garden or root section, would you tape a 1ft wide line through some roots because it's unfair or would be "like you're riding a slightly different course" if you were to let riders choose their own line?

 can they do this with Gee and the falcon?

 This clearly shows that Rachel did not have the stamina (Because of her Virus). In top form Rachel would not have been struggling as much in the 2nd technical section and could have gained ground she lost through the straight away.

It is what it is. The only issue is that both Rachel and Gee never do good in MSA (They always struggle there) so it will be any woman's or man's race come race day.

Well I'm just glad that this is the most exciting year in WC DH racing.

 while rachel is not on top form you can't take anything away from manon she has been killing it this season and is an amazing talent. Rachel was very fast in the top section, maybe the virus had a bit to do with it or maybe she just went too hard too early. Manon hit the rock garden and that tech bit much smoother and faster than rachel.

It is hard to say rachel was not effected reality is she is the standard by which all women are measured right now but manon is seriously skilled and young, It will be great when we get rachel back to health, I can see those two having a killer battle.

The jumps It didn't appear like there was any significant speed difference. The take the first kicker to get the speed than pump the rest seemed like the best approach, although watching was it mitch ropo? scrub all of them looked so damn fast.
manon didnt really seem to make up any time during the wooden kicker vs scrub section it was the next section after the tunnel where she opened it up and made the gains.

 You're right Manon is an absolute weapon and she's on the form of her life right now, and it's paying off. But seeing Rachel just start pulling away on the top/middle section shows she has that pace, but her lack of fitness due to her virus means she's getting tired very quickly, where as usually she'd be able to hold that pace the whole way down!

 Do we even know what kind of virus rachel had? It's been over a month now if I recall correctly, she should have had enough time to get back from it. The way I see it, they were pretty much equal around 2:45 until the tech section around 3:19 where manon pulled away greatly.

 The name of her virus escapes me, but it was pretty serious! She was lying in bed with no exorcise for 6 weeks dude, a lot of fitness can be lost in that time. Left her fatigued and massively down in power, a month is not enough time to completely regain fitness. Rachel pulled away for the first half of the track then started to drop in pace, due to fatigue from her illness, look at last years results when she was on form like Manon!

 My bad I guess, I read about the "mysterious virus" and I was under the impression it lasted for a week or something like that. It's true that you can lose a lot of fitness during 6 weeks but don't forget they are surrounded by great teams too. She's probably not back 100% but judging by the results, she must be pretty close to be.

 viruses can hang on for a while even once your back 95% it can take a bit of time to drop the virus completely, with her massive load and racing she hasn't really given her self a huge break to fully recover. 6 weeks been healthy you loose lots of fitness, 6 weeks of been sick it goes downhill fast, She may be surrounded by a good team but she couldn't train while she was sick and she can really train fully now.

 @ Z05m ... Never do good at MSA?

Rachel's won twice and taken a podium there. You could say that's not good by her standards but anyone else would be pretty pleased ;p

 how about a Minnaar and Bryceland. Or Minnaar and Brosnan. Those would be awesome

 THIS is by far the coolest thing I've seen come out of redbull/UCI DH. YES. MORE.

 +1
More please. What a great way to analyze a course and compare the different lines!

 They should do Gwin's no tire run vs. Manon's run

 haha was gonna say something like that but wait..no one else could probly ride without a tire like that!

 @the-bike-life

Aaron Gwin: Speed- 33.560 km/hr Split 1- 2:41.579 Split 2- 3:20.578 Final time- 3:58.066
Manon Carpenter: Speed- 46.129 kh/hr Split 1- 2:43.343 Split 2- 3:08.095 Final time- 3:42.579

She was still faster than him by 16 seconds... and we all know that men and women have different body structures, centers of gravity due to differences in muscular/skeletal composition and Aaron probably is taller and heavier than Manon. What exactly are you getting at? Hasn't this subject of guys vs. girls been done to death already? She's probably still faster than you...

 Nadiasamer...............She's probably still faster than you

haha spot on pal, +props from me

 Great footage... going into the pedal Manon was 2 to 2.5 seconds behind (approx looking at the video) and she was leading coming out of it and kept putting more time into Rach. Wow. What a ride!

 nadiasamer relax buddy. No one is saying she is slow, it would just be a cool comparison. Try not to see sexism in everything.

 they're both definitely fatser than me

 Qbert2000... Fatser? I quite like the sound of that word; I think I'll try and find a use for it.

Fats (adj: fatser, fatsest).
The quality of being able to wipe the floor with someone at a given activity, even though the speaker mistakenly believes there is some reason why that should not be the case.
Ex: He gets all his clothes from the charity shop yet he is still fatser than me when it comes to looking good.

 I was going to say the same thing.
Differences in rider height might be an issue? Somebody who knows more about video editing could probably tell us if they could sync it so the ground was the same level for two different sized riders.

 I guess it might be trickier as these are POV clips and the riders are moving. Also, their line choices are different. If they can have a third person point of view dolly camera following them all the way down, then that would be possible. Of course, it will be a huge amount of money to spend.

 forgot the name of the software / company too. they just have to establish fixed points in the track where the camera/s would be situated so that they can superimpose the images from a fixed vantage point. using this, you can see the different line choices and you will see which one will be faster.

 Yes. Technically, it is not that high-tech from a video post-production aspect. The most important thing is a fixed camera position, or exactly the same movement of the camera (if it is a moving shot). Aaah, I'm gonna try this out with friends some time. Gonna be fun!

 That would be awesome, Gwon V Manon headcam!

 He doesn't wear a GoPro in the race run

 I can't watch this on any of my devices.......fffffffffùuuuuuùuuuuuuuu etc

 Or Manon is better at riding technical sections?

 Manon was crazy at the technical stuff when she was even 16. She definitely does not come with fear.

 i saw several riders with POV cameras in race run, so I guess it ain't a problem any more

 hell yeah love watchin the moment she passes her, crazy...than keeps haulin......haha

 For what purpose? It is common knowledge that biological differences make it impossible for men and women to compete equally but I bet you couldn't ride your bike as fast as either Rachel or Manon!

 Now show me gwin with childbearing hips and 50lbs less body muscle mass and higher estrogen levels/lower androgen levels and see how well that works out for him. I'm pretty sure the top female athletes are training just as hard, givin'er just as hard as the guys are with what they can do within the physical limitations of their bodies. Times like this I wish Anne-Caro was still around chicking a large percentage ofguys WITH childbearing hips, ha. Makes me wonder how many people chirping about wanting to see a girls vs. guys comparison could keep up to the top ladies. Women are built differently, and most guys seemed to be stoked on those anatomical differences. Soooo, if you don't have anything nice to say... you know the rest.