7 Things We Learned - Bielsko-Biala EDR World Cup 2024

1. We could see tighter Enduro results than Downhill this week.

Isabeau Courdurier and Charlie Murray won the second round of the EDR World Cup in Poland today, but by the narrowest of margins. Over the course of 27:23.465 minutes of racing, just 0.236 separated Courdurier from Harriet Harnden, who settled for second after another spectacular weekend. Both made mistakes throughout the day, with Courdurier crashing on stages 1 and 2 and Harnden crashing on stage 2.

The men's race was, incredibly, even tighter, with Charlie Murray's time of 23:42.034 just 0.095 faster than Poland's own Slawomir Lukasik. Slawomir won three straight stages to end the day, but missed out on taking his first UCI Enduro World Cup win at home by 0.095 seconds.

In Fort William, we were expecting the podium to be separated by hundredths of seconds, and while we saw Vali Höll win by just half a second, Loic Bruni put a remarkable 1.84 seconds into Troy Brosnan over the course of racing with is time of 4:06:104.

Other than the men's XCC World Cup in Mairiporã, which resulted in a photo finish, this is the closest World Cup race we've had this year.

Now, I'm speculating here, but those times are really, really close. They were so close in fact that there's a good chance that the downhill races could be won by larger margins come Sunday.


2. Canadian men are showing up in a big way.

Finn Iles was the only Canadian male rider to get a top 20 at the Fort William World Cup with his third place and Carter Woods was the only Canadian male rider to get a top 20 at an XC World Cup with his 15th place in Araxa. In today's Enduro World Cup however, there were six Canadian men in the top 20 in the Elite category of with Jesse Melamed (5th), Jack Menzies (6th), Kasper Woolley (7th), Elliot Jamieson (14th), Remi Gauvin (15th), and Rhys Verner (19th).

While we've typically spoken about French dominance in enduro, we only saw four French riders in the top 20 in Bielsko-Biala with Adrien Dailly being the top male French rider in 8th.

As for the women, the French women have been dominating for years, but now they're seeing strong competition from the British women, with five French women and five British women in the top 20 at the Polish round.




3. We could see record four-peat overall wins this year.

Isabeau Courdurier's first years of racing were in the shadow of the ever-dominant Cecile Ravanel, who won three overall titles between 2016 and 2018. The 2018 season saw Isabeau take second behind Cecile in every single race.

When Ravanel retired from enduro racing in 2019, Courdurier went on to have the perfect season and win every single race in the 2019 Enduro World Series. In fact, from what we can see from her Roots and Rain page, Courdurier has never finished outside of the top 10 in an EWS or EDR World Cup race since she started racing in 2013, other than one DNF in Rotorua in 2017. Last season, she won four of the seven UCI Enduro World Cups.

Rude has also racked up three overall titles in 2015, 2016 and 2023, tying with Sam Hill's back-to-back overall wins for 2017, 2018, and 2019. Courdurier is currently leading the women's overall by the slimmest of margins of 893 points to Harnden's 891 and Rude is currently sitting in second place with 859 points to Charles Murray's 871.


4. Pro teams really are the dream.

Jesse Melamed and Jack Menzies were able to race in Bielsko-Biala on fresh bikes just days after their Finale Ligure race bikes got stolen out of their team van near Vienna, Austria on May 13th. It really is remarkable that the Canyon CLLCTV team was able to rally together in less than a week to get both riders on new bikes. Not only that, but obviously they felt 100% at ease on their fresh steeds since they finished 5th and 6th. It's impressive that the team mechanics and the riders are so dialled that they can build up a brand new bike that feels exactly the same as the race bike from the previous weekend.

Not only that, but Melamed said before practice in an Instagram post that: "None of the stress of the situation passed to me so I could focus on the job I had to do once the time came." It's great that the two riders were able to stay focused on their job and not worry about what they were going to be riding on come practice on Thursday. You can bet that the mechanics and support staff felt the added pressure this week.

For a privateer in the same situation, there would have been an incredible amount of stress and it's unlikely that a new race bike would have been able to exactly match the feel of their previous race bike - if they were able to even get one to Poland and build it up in time.



5. Charlie Murray's win was a long time coming, but not totally unexpected.

Charlie Murray's first Enduro World Series race was in 2018, when he had a disastrous first stage in Lo Barnechea, Chile and finished 128th overall as a result. The following weekend in Manizales, he took 48th place, before skipping rounds 3-6 and finishing the season off with a 74th in Ainsa-Sobrarbe and a 77th in Finale Ligure. The following year, in 2019, he did rounds 4, 5, 6, and 7, with his best result being a 26th in Northstar, California.

In 2020, he climbed further up the rankings, with a 20th, a 14th and then a 6th place. In 2021, he stepped onto the EWS podium for the first time with a third place at the second round in Val di Fassa. In 2022, he was consistently top 15 with a fifth place and a fourth place to finish up the season. In 2023, he levelled it up again and finished every race other than round one in the single digits, but still flew under the radar without any podiums to his name.

This season, he kicked things off with a second place, followed by a win. With the consistency of last season and the fact that his results seem to get better throughout the season, you can bet his competitors are noticing him this year.



6. Chloe Taylor's podium was also a long time coming, and totally unexpected.

This is Chloe Taylor's fifth year racing at the international-level in enduro and her best result in the Enduro World Series and EDR World Cup so far, was a tenth place last year in Pietra Ligure in 2023.

She's been consistently improving, but she's never had a single-digit race result in the past five years. Regardless, it was great to see her put it together for the new Gowaan Girls team in Bielsko-Biala with a decisive first place on Stage 2 as conditions turned variable with the rain, a third place on Stage 4 and consistent results throughout the day.


7. Things are looking up for the YT Mob and Jack Moir.

Last week, I mentioned how unlucky it was that YT Mob enduro riders had sustained three injuries over the course of a year, but this race, all three riders finished the race and it was an impressive comeback for Jack Moir. Moir finished the Bielsko-Biala race with a 4th place a week after he needed to sit out the Finale Ligure round due to an injury from washing out that affected his grip strength.

Kasper Wooley worked his way up the results sheet to 7th and it was a decent race for Christian Textor in 26th.


Other facts:
• Mirco Vendemmia proved his fourth place in Finale Ligure wasn't just because he's a local with a 11th place.
• Martin Maes was forced to abandon after he was unable to fix a puncture that he suffered at the bottom of Stage 1.

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Racing and Events Enduro Racing Things We Learned EDR Bielsko-Biala 2024 World Cup Enduro