4 Things We Learned From the Snowshoe Double Header Season Finale
1. We're in one of the most competitive eras of downhill
![Eyes on the prize.]()
With five winners in six races in the Elite Men's field and four in the women's field, we're in one of the most competitive eras in downhill racing history. You have to go all the way back to the Golden Age of 2004 to find more individual elite downhill World Cup winners in a season when there were victories for Chausson, Moseley, Saner, Jonnier, Gros, Minnaar, Peat, Gee Atherton, Vasquez and Barel in a six-round series.
As I've adequately demonstrated in my woeful Pinkbike Predictions articles this year (I really do try and get them right, I promise), this season has been one of the hardest to call in recent years with established French fliers facing challenges from up-and-coming hotshots and resurgent veterans throughout the year in both series. Snowshoe perfectly demonstrated this with two riders who struggled early in the season and were all but written off this time a fortnight ago coming from nowhere to take the title. It's exciting, it's brilliant and downhill is in the healthiest state it has been for years.
2. World Cup DH isn't your average testing grounds
![photo]()
From Santa Cruz frames to Schwalbe ProCore, sometimes the World Cups throw up some very high-profile failures. These past few weeks, it has been Enve's turn.
It definitely doesn't look great for a brand to see a rider's title chance explode because of failure in its product, but judging a brand on individual failures at World Cups isn’t reasonable - being reborn as Amaury Pierron’s bike would be reincarnation hell. Between tire casings, tire pressure, wheel build quality, spoke tension, terrain, line choice, etc, the stack up of factors makes the blame game near futile. But we’re not a reasonable bunch, and after several failures in a row, a narrative starts being built.
Enve has built its carbon wheel business on hard mode. Made in USA. Stratospheric prices. A polarized fanbase that can’t decide if their wheels are too stiff or not stiff enough, high profile test failures but at the same time, in the past decade they’ve earned 3 world championships, an elite men’s DH overall win, and podiumed at 79% of all the DH races they’ve entered. Not insignificant.
It costs a lot of money to go racing. Putting your equipment under the best riders in the world isn’t cheap. We hope Enve and brands like them don’t retreat from World Cup DH racing for fear of bad publicity. It’s already tempting enough for brands to buy endless streams of paid-for “reviews” from YouTube influencers. Whether it’s Rampage or racing, our sport delivers untold punishment to equipment, and every brand that puts their hat in the ring deserves respect.
3. Snowshoe holds some magic
![Vali Holl came to Snowshoe without an elite World Cup win to her name. She is now leaving with two and an overall title to go with it.]()
It's apparently good luck to hold an acorn in your pocket in West Virginia, but Loic Bruni and Vali Holl must have been hoarding them like squirrels the way the results filtered out last weekend. Snowshoe has only twice hosted the World Cup circus, but both times we've been treated to some blockbuster racing with unpredictable results and intense finales. It's tempting to say there's magic in the air in West Virginia but, like most things supernatural, there's probably a more rational explanation lurking beneath the surface.
To start with, Snowshoe has hosted the season finale both times - the culmination of a year-long campaign is always going to reach a crescendo of drama that has been simmering through the year. Secondly, North American races are a rare thing at the moment and bring with them a host of uncommon challenges for racers - smaller pits, different time zones and new routines and food. The track is also a bit flatter than others on the circuit and being physical, precision and holding speed are more important than anywhere else. Different racers work best in different conditions, so it's no surprise that the results get shaken up whenever we come to this incredible venue.
4. One of Canada's most successful race weeks
![2nd place qualifier Iles went all out and overcooked it this time. He ll be back with avengeance.]()
Canada may be the modern home of mountain biking, but that has rarely translated into downhill domination. Of course, there have been stand-out moments - Stevie Smith's race and series wins and Miranda Miller's World Championships are the obvious ones from recent years - but across both men's categories in Snowshoe, riders showed that the future of downhill could involve an awful lot of maple leaves.
Two Canadian men have never stood on the same Elite World Cup podium before, but that all changed on Wednesday when Mark Wallace and Finn Iles finished fourth and fifth following Finn's first place qualifier. Plus in the juniors, we saw a new wave of talent coming through. Jackson Goldstone rounded off his stellar debut season by claiming the overall at a canter and then Commencal Muc Off's Tristan Lemire picked up his first top 3 as he starts to find his feet at the highest level.
With five winners in six races in the Elite Men's field and four in the women's field, we're in one of the most competitive eras in downhill racing history. You have to go all the way back to the Golden Age of 2004 to find more individual elite downhill World Cup winners in a season when there were victories for Chausson, Moseley, Saner, Jonnier, Gros, Minnaar, Peat, Gee Atherton, Vasquez and Barel in a six-round series.
As I've adequately demonstrated in my woeful Pinkbike Predictions articles this year (I really do try and get them right, I promise), this season has been one of the hardest to call in recent years with established French fliers facing challenges from up-and-coming hotshots and resurgent veterans throughout the year in both series. Snowshoe perfectly demonstrated this with two riders who struggled early in the season and were all but written off this time a fortnight ago coming from nowhere to take the title. It's exciting, it's brilliant and downhill is in the healthiest state it has been for years.
2. World Cup DH isn't your average testing grounds
Photo: Bartek Wolinski // Red Bull Content Pool
From Santa Cruz frames to Schwalbe ProCore, sometimes the World Cups throw up some very high-profile failures. These past few weeks, it has been Enve's turn.
It definitely doesn't look great for a brand to see a rider's title chance explode because of failure in its product, but judging a brand on individual failures at World Cups isn’t reasonable - being reborn as Amaury Pierron’s bike would be reincarnation hell. Between tire casings, tire pressure, wheel build quality, spoke tension, terrain, line choice, etc, the stack up of factors makes the blame game near futile. But we’re not a reasonable bunch, and after several failures in a row, a narrative starts being built.
Enve has built its carbon wheel business on hard mode. Made in USA. Stratospheric prices. A polarized fanbase that can’t decide if their wheels are too stiff or not stiff enough, high profile test failures but at the same time, in the past decade they’ve earned 3 world championships, an elite men’s DH overall win, and podiumed at 79% of all the DH races they’ve entered. Not insignificant.
It costs a lot of money to go racing. Putting your equipment under the best riders in the world isn’t cheap. We hope Enve and brands like them don’t retreat from World Cup DH racing for fear of bad publicity. It’s already tempting enough for brands to buy endless streams of paid-for “reviews” from YouTube influencers. Whether it’s Rampage or racing, our sport delivers untold punishment to equipment, and every brand that puts their hat in the ring deserves respect.
3. Snowshoe holds some magic
It's apparently good luck to hold an acorn in your pocket in West Virginia, but Loic Bruni and Vali Holl must have been hoarding them like squirrels the way the results filtered out last weekend. Snowshoe has only twice hosted the World Cup circus, but both times we've been treated to some blockbuster racing with unpredictable results and intense finales. It's tempting to say there's magic in the air in West Virginia but, like most things supernatural, there's probably a more rational explanation lurking beneath the surface.
To start with, Snowshoe has hosted the season finale both times - the culmination of a year-long campaign is always going to reach a crescendo of drama that has been simmering through the year. Secondly, North American races are a rare thing at the moment and bring with them a host of uncommon challenges for racers - smaller pits, different time zones and new routines and food. The track is also a bit flatter than others on the circuit and being physical, precision and holding speed are more important than anywhere else. Different racers work best in different conditions, so it's no surprise that the results get shaken up whenever we come to this incredible venue.
4. One of Canada's most successful race weeks
Canada may be the modern home of mountain biking, but that has rarely translated into downhill domination. Of course, there have been stand-out moments - Stevie Smith's race and series wins and Miranda Miller's World Championships are the obvious ones from recent years - but across both men's categories in Snowshoe, riders showed that the future of downhill could involve an awful lot of maple leaves.
Two Canadian men have never stood on the same Elite World Cup podium before, but that all changed on Wednesday when Mark Wallace and Finn Iles finished fourth and fifth following Finn's first place qualifier. Plus in the juniors, we saw a new wave of talent coming through. Jackson Goldstone rounded off his stellar debut season by claiming the overall at a canter and then Commencal Muc Off's Tristan Lemire picked up his first top 3 as he starts to find his feet at the highest level.
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Fun fact tho, snoqualmie might be opening the old World cup track with the bike park next summer
Hats off to Snowshoe for putting on this event, and to the riders for giving us such a great show. Snowshoe forever.
Sketchy backroads. I’d rather break down in a bad area of NY than in the backwoods of WV
The wide alloy rims that I am aware of without looking anything up are, IBIS, Sun Ringle, DT Swiss XM521, Raceface used to make an ARC35 but don't know.if they still do, along with the ones you mentioned.
I just can't get over that they considered running a high risk setup on Deprela's bike. They must have not really been that worried one way or another if they took the WC overall, they just wanted to be as fast as possible, period.
Economically, environmentally and spectator/fans wise it makes sense, and many riders seem to want a bigger series too. What if three of six venues were double headers and suddenly bam, you have a nine race series with minimal impact on team budgets.
Especially if travelling a long way to Aus/NZ or flying a mostly European circuit around it just seems to make sense
People enjoy poking Specialized and Enve at every chance they get...
They (Commencal team) knew what can happen,IMHO it was an unnecessary gamble.
Yeah, obviously the terrain is there and fresh tracks could be built for a WC and no resort is going to deal with UCI around here in order to host a race
1. Jackson Hole, Wyoming
2. Brighton, Utah
3. Stevens Pass, Washington
Anyhow, all the races in Europe works for me - prime time Saturday night viewing on RBTV!! Much better than my falling asleep in the early hours during both the women's and men's last 10-15 riders
And true. Yeah most are on leases which means you’ll never get the okay for that fall line track that we are always after.
Had another great convo with someone recently about how the Rockies just don’t host races anymore because of how little it’s needed for publicity etc and how back in the day, people were stoked to host races as well as attend races in the Rockies because you were riding tracks/resorts/places you never got to touch outside of that race. Now we can ride pretty much everywhere so it just isn’t the same. The southeast is going through the same boom that the Rockies had 15-20 years ago.
That theory checks out to me-the SE is definitely using mountain biking as a tourism driver, whereas CO is super busy with tourists already.
The terrain is there and all we can do is hope someday there can be a worthy track there again
I haven’t heard that but I hope that isn’t the case. That’s beyond words terrible.
Next time you come around this area, you’ll have to ride here again and see all the improvements over the years
Regardless, hell of a season, hell of a finals and the UCI world cup always delivers.
What did we learn? never think you have a title locked up until it's over.
Only 12 didn't qualify for the finals of the 2nd round.
Does this show that Dh is a sponsored rider and rich man's sport, predominantly participated by Europeans?
Only 12 didn't qualify for the 2nd race who started.
Compilation Run 2021 Snowshoe DH