Enduro World Series Round Three: Post Race Analysis

This weekend's racing was unlike anything we have seen so far in the Enduro World Series. Although there were two races in the French format last year, Valloire looks to have produced the toughest test of both bike and rider we have seen so far. If you add in the transfer to Sunday's stages, which riders did five times during the day, the total of vertical descending for the weekend must be near the 12,000m mark. One rider told us that they worked out the distance on trails to be around 80km. I don't know of any other kind of race where riders face that kind of brutality. It was a showcase for where the sport originated from, how enduro was born. While it is clear that the mainstream, worldwide take on enduro is evolving away from this to become something less intimidating, anybody who wants to run an enduro or talk about the sport of enduro needs to come and experience this kind of racing. It is unlike anything else in mountain biking, maybe the purest test of bike and rider. What is certain is that it is a world away from any marketing-lead idea of enduro as a fashionable buzzword or paint colour...

The long-awaited win for Graves

Coming into this season many people expected Jared Graves to be the dominant force in the men's racing. What those people underestimated is how hard the rest of the field would be pushing - it's not been a case of Grave under-performing though, it's more a case of everyone else stepping their game up significantly. His winning margin over second-placed Damien Oton this weekend was 3.5 seconds after an hour and twenty minutes of racing - that's 80 minutes of racing and an average difference of 0.04 seconds per minute on the clock in race that covered 6,000 vertical metres - which is more than an entire season of World Cup DH in two days. That kind of margin is literally a matter of centimetres per minute The difference between Graves and the other riders who lead the race over the weekend was the number of mistakes he made - he lost less time than any of his main rivals and as they fell around him to punctures and mechanicals he quietly kept putting in solid stage times, so when the smoke cleared he was the man left standing.


The battle for the womens title is heating up

It's now two-to-one to Tracy Moseley in her battle with Anne-Caroline Chausson. Moseley was dominant all day Saturday, come Sunday morning ACC turned up the heat and started chasing her down winning the first stage of the day, but no sooner had ACC clawed back some time when Tracy responded and won the final two stages, meaning she took five of the six stage wins this weekend. She took a winning margin of a minute and a half, which is one hell of a margin when the racing is this tough. More than that, she placed 69th in the scratch standings in a race with 340 entrants - that kind of performance is what serious, but non-professional male racers would be aiming for.

Getting tougher at the top

Race wins at this level are never undeserved - the fact of the matter is that come the end of the weekend Jared Graves was faster than everyone else, but he didn't win a stage this weekend. Justin Leov won three stages, Nico Lau two stages and Francois Bailly-Maitre one. But they all had problems, while Graves pushed on relentlessly. And then there is Damien Oton, who consistently put in strong stage times all weekend - in fact, if you look at the positions rather than the times, you would have expected him to be the one standing atop the box come Sunday. And that's not to mention Florian Nicolai who still holds fourth in the series rankings, despite an off weekend for his home series. Top five in the series goes Graves, Leov, Oton, Nicolai and Lau with just 160 points separating all of them - with 500 points on offer for a race win and so many riders on pace, it's clear that the racing is just going to get fiercer and more exciting as the season goes on. That is without mention the other racers still within touching distance of the lead too, like Rene Wildhaber or Alex Cure. And, as this weekend has shown, it's easy to make a mistake with this much time on track so it's still too early to do anything more than guess who will take the crown this year...

Beerten and Ravenel are getting faster

While Tracy and ACC are still the class of the women's field, things are getting faster behind them. Anneke Beerten took third spot on the podium this weekend, and was as high as second come the end of Saturday - it was always going to take a while for to make the switch from a power sport like 4X to an endurance sport like enduro, but from where we're standing, it looks like she's getting faster and faster. Then there is Cecile Ravanel, at the time of writing this a separate classification for the women isn't available, so we can't look at stage times, but she lost a lot of time to a puncture on Saturday, only to carve her way back through the field on Sunday, making up precious series points and by the looks of it beat ACC on at least one stage. Throwing another couple of riders into the mix for race wins would be a great boost for the womens competition and we hope to see these two back on the podium a lot more this season.


Wildhaber seems to be finding his enduro legs

Rene Wildhaber is another rider we slept on coming into the season and will admit that we didn't expect to see him this close to the sharp end of things, but are excited to see him going so well. In fact, he was just four seconds off Graves this weekend, which is incredible pace no matter how you look at it. Coming into last year he was one of the riders many people expected to be a dominant force in enduro after winning the Megavalanche something like seven times, which is an astounding record, and one neither Clementz nor Absalon can touch. While Clementz took the sport by the scruff of the neck and Abaslon steadily nailed a top five position last year, Wildhaber seems to have taken a little longer to get into his rhythm and this season his results are getting better and better. Right now he holds sixth in the title race, which is within striking distance, and we wouldn't bet against him ending up a fair way higher come the end of the season.


Riders to watch in the coming races

For the first time this season Yoann Barelli showed the form that convinced Giant to sign him to their factory team, a fifth is undoubtedly a welcome result for the team. Curtis Keene posted a best-ever sixth place and has put in rides in the last couple of races that line him up for a top ten plate come the end of the season. Thomas Lapeyrie had a breakthrough ride this weekend , after injuring himself pre-season posted a solid ride in Scotland and an impressive eighth this weekend - his first time in the top ten. This is the first race this season where we have seen the pace we know Ben Cruz has, he says they've been working a lot on tuning his Lefty fork since Tweedlove and it seems to have helped him show his potential. He had a few problems on Sunday, dropping him a couple of places behind his compatriot Keene as the two tussle for the honour of being fastest American. Joe Barnes tenth place finish is definitely worth noting - he himself admits that this was his weakest race of the season, so to net a decent finish will only help build his confidence after his brilliant ride in Scotland. In other words, there are a lot of fast guys to keep your eyes on when the race starts again in La Thuile 16 and 17 July!