The sun was shining brightly this morning and it was going to be a good day for racing. The week's precipitation decided to take a hiatus, and the track dried out here in Albstadt. This made for some fast, wickedly quick racing. Jolanda Neff ran away with another win and Julien Absalon edged out Nino Schurter for the big finish in a down to the wire race that included a nasty spill for Nino.
About the PhotographersMatthew Delorme • Age: 40 • Years Shooting: 8 Matthew DeLorme is just one of Pinkbike’s motley crew of World Cup photographers. He currently lives out of a Ogio bag, and calls the road his home. Delorme works for Trek Bicycle, covering their MTB racing programs. He can usually be found laying in the dirt trackside, cracking jokes and saying things that make little to no sense. He enjoys capturing accessory moments and the journey every bit as much as catching the action shot. Irmo Keizer • Age: 36 • Years Shooting: 10 Irmo Keizer has been mountain biking since high school. Irmo loves nature, technical trails and landscapes and dislikes too many race lines and fire roads. Irmo has a strong passion for all sorts of mountain bike disciplines ranging from cross country, to enduro and downhill. Combining his passion of mountain biking and photography ten years ago, Irmo has been working as a photographer/editor in mountain biking ever since.
46 Comments
Props to RedBull as well for covering the events and putting the commentated live feed online!
I feel the race format has great potential! As it is not only biker would be exciting in watching this if you see what i mean.
Who's in for crowdfunding shredtv ?
(Neff made this womens race kinda boring but damn, I could watch her ride a bike all day anyway :p )
Also, @zephxiii - your comment isn't getting nearly the love it deserves. I laughed out loud in the office and now my colleagues think I've finally cracked.
BTW, it's Maja, not "Mia" (the caption under Wloszczowska and Neff's photo). Keep up the good work.
"Schurter went hard to overtake Julien and it backfired. He slid out on one of the final turns..."
kind of makes it sound as if he wrecked while overtaking, which of course isn't the case. He was well ahead but just a little too hot in one of the last corners.
Just nitpicking a little, but great pics! I normally don't watch XC, but put it on yesterday morning and watched the mens race, influenced heavily by the article with pics of some of their bikes. Still a little sedate for my taste, but awesome still!
You can watch the replay of the Nove Mesto race; it has a bit more technical features than Albstadt.
My favorite course, though, is Pietermaritzburg, SA. Watching Nino smoke through the rock garden there on a HT is absolutely amazing.
TL; DR They're fast as hell.
I've just compared that to one of my recent rides and I won't even quote it here because I'm embarrassingly slow.