5 Things We Learned from the La Thuile EWS

Either in lycra or in baggies, Harriet Harnden has been looking exceptionally fast at every race she has entered this season. Coming off a top ten at the U23 XC World Cup in Les Gets, Harriet was immediately up to speed in La Thuile, taking 2nd place at the first race of the week.

However, it was in the second race of the week where the young British racer made history as she joined Richie Rude as the youngest winner of an Elite EWS race at 20 years old. Harriet is also now the youngest Elite Woman rider to win an EWS, beating the previous record held by Isabeau Courdurier, who won her first EWS aged 23 at the Derby round in 2017.

Jack Moir and Richie Rude are having an incredible 2021 season so far as no rider is close to matching the two riders' results. This is the first time that the opening four rounds have been shared by two Elite Male riders with two wins each and that currently puts them just five points apart from each other in the overall standings after four rounds of racing. On top of this, the first races in Val Di Fassa already provided some of the closest racing in EWS history as Richie and Jack were just separated by 0.48 seconds.

A trend is forming with Richie securing wins at both Race 1s so far and Jack Moir has taken the victory at both Race 2s. Jack's win at the second race in La Thuile was larger than before due to a crash on stage four for Richie, but both riders have no placed lower than second place so far at a race, showing an incredible level of performance and consistency.

The Elite Women's racing at the EWS has seen plenty of dominant forces over the years from Tracey Moseley and ACC in the early years to Cecile Ravanel and Isabeau Courdurier securing perfect seasons in more recent times.

However, since the shakeup of events due to the pandemic last year we have seen a shift in the Elite Women's racing where every stage has become unpredictable and it is harder than ever before to make a top result. So far this year, the results have already matched 2020 and 2014's record years for the most unique winners with three different people taking the top step of the podium. Both races in La Thuile also saw three unique stage winners, and there were Elite Women's victories of less than a second.

Canyon is sitting pretty in the men's overall standings as it currently holds three of the top five spots. With Jack Moir in second place, Dimitri Tordo in fourth and Jose Borges rounding it off, the Collective are having an amazing start to the 2021 season. Interestingly Jack Moir has almost singlehandedly doubled Canyon's total EWS victories in the first four rounds of 2021 as it went from three previous EWS wins to five. The last time a Canyon topped the podium before this year was in Tasmania back at the start of 2019.

Andreane Lanthier Nadeau produced a dominant performance on the Pro Stage of race 2, taking the win by over 7 seconds, but the rest of her weekend wouldn't be such smooth sailing.

The evening after the Pro Stage Andreane was being checked out for a partially dislocated ankle, but instead of withdrawing she decided to take on the final four stages on Sunday in considerable pain. Despite her injury, Andreane still managed to win the Queen stage by seven seconds and held the overall lead until the final stage where a crash and a puncture took her out of contention for the race, but made her one of the standout riders of the week.

After the race, Andreane shared this on Instagram: "Ankle hurt like a bitch but didn’t get worse after stage 1. Held on to my lead all day and had a HUGEY on the last stage. Ripped off the front brake, dropper post, full deal. Shredded rear brake while sitting down. Oh what today could have been. Happy to be healthy from the crash."

We are wishing Andreane all the best with her recovery and hope she is back racing at full speed soon.