Race Day Photo Epic: Out With a Bang - EWS Finale Ligure 2018
That's it that's all, the Grande Finale and the end of an exciting Enduro World Series came to a close after four dry and dusty stages on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Finale Ligure has always been the perfect venue to end the year on a high note and 2018 was no exception. Even with the shortened one-day format, the racing was exciting and there was drama right from the get-go.
With her second spot in the overall secure, Isabeau Courdurier had nothing to lose by pushing hard for a win and on stage one that's exactly what she did, taking almost eight seconds out of Cecile Ravanel. Now for a change it would be Cecile who had to play catch-up. In the men's it was a repeat of the past week's rivalry in Ainsa, as Richie Rude took the top spot to start the day with Martin Maes in tow by less than a second.
Isabeau would continue to pull ahead on stage two, but Cecile mounted a charge on the following stage to bring the fight down to the last stage with a small enough time gap to put victory within reach. Richie too would extend his lead, and Martin Maes would suffer a hand injury that would see him drop off the pace. Maes had to limp it home in the hope of salvaging points for the overall. Series leader and defending champ Sam Hill hovered just inside the top ten to ensure the world title would surely remain his.
On the final stage of the season, Cecile Ravanel continued to build on the momentum of her previous stage win and took full advantage of mistakes by Courdurier to make up time and put six seconds into all the women's field. With that result, Ravanel capped off a perfect season with eight wins in eight starts and, of course, with it another world title. Rounding out the podium for the second week in a row was Andreane Lanthier Nadeau.
For Richie Rude, it would be total stage domination as he took all four - his second win in a row and third of the season. Oton held steady to grab second and Frenchman Kevin Miquel took home his first ever podium in third. In the overall, Martin Mas would slip from the series podium after scoring no points, and with a consistent result in Finale, it would be Sam Hill who was crowned Enduro World Champion for the second straight year.
Richie Rude, doing it for Jared Graves again today.
Robin Wallner tapes up the ankle of injured teammate Lewis Buchanan before a long day in the saddle.
Jacy making the final checks to Sam Hill's race machine.
Cube teammates Greg Callaghan and Zakarias Johansen prepping for battle.
RC is outnumbered and can't make them go away.
Sam Hill was a man in demand all weekend.
Isabeau flies the French flag before heading out.
Curtis Keene and Remy Absalon roll out of the start gate for the last EWS of 2018.
A confident looking Martin Maes in the morning. Unfortunately, he injured his hand early on after hitting a tree causing him too much pain to contend for the win.
Last race day of the year for Martin Maes
Isabeau Courdurier won the first two stages but would concede her time back to Ravanel by the end of the day.
Finale is one of Richie's favorites, and today it showed. Rude closed out the season with three wins.
Richie Rude proved that he is still very much be a force to be reckoned with.
What could have been for Greg Callaghan? He was sitting in third until a crash towards the bottom of stage three took him out the running.
Sam Hill had one hand on the overall trophy coming into the weekend and would not let his grip slip.
Oton, up a place from last week. The Frenchman finished second.
Second today and second in the overall for king of consistency, Damien Oton.
Fifth for Bex Baraona to close out the season.
What a ride to the podium from Kevin Miquel.
Sam Hill kept it steady in the top ten to take his second consecutive EWS title.
Cecile Ravanel was chasing Isabeau today. She didn't catch her until stage four.
Elliot Heap on his way to the win and the title in Finale.
Noga Korem nears that end of season swim.
Despite not standing on a podium this year, Florian Nicolai managed to grab third in the overall.
Jesse Melamed rounded off his injury-interrupted season with a seventh place.
Ella Conolly took a clean sweep of stages on the way to her clean sweep of victories in U21 this season.
Andreane Lanthier Nadeau took back-to-back podiums in the final rounds this year, which bodes extremely well for next season. One to watch.
Alex Cure on his way to sixth on stage two and sixth overall.
An off on stage two put Cecile behind Isabeau by some 16 seconds, but she reeled in that time and in the end, closed out a perfect season.
A very happy Richie Rude who nursed a bent crank and a slow leak most of the day to dominate all four stages.
Kevin Miquel was fourth last week and third this week to land on the podium for the first time.
ALN celebrates another podium finish with a sea beer.
Second in the world again for Frenchman Damien Oton and the small Devinci team out of Canada.
Richie Rude, grabbing his third win of the year, flanked by Damien Oton and Kevin Miquel.
Cecile Ravanel, Isabeau Courdurier, Katy Winton on top in the overall series in a repeat of last season.
Sam Hill, Damien Oton, and Florian Nicolai took the top three podium spots in the overall after eight rounds.
Your U21 Women Overall from left to right: Abigale Lawton, Ella Conolly, Leah Maunsell.
Your U21 Men Overall from left to right: Theotim Trabac, Elliott Heap, Cole Lucas.
Your 2018 overall EWS winners.
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92 Comments
Cheers!
Ross and Matt actually shot all the action/race shots as I was layed up all day with some nasty food poisoning and did not venture far from the pits/podium... I just helped edit some raw files later in the night to help spread the workload out
If he was canadian or american he would be considerer the next big thing.
I feel bad for Zé Borges. The guy puts so much effort and dedication to try and move up in the ranks, and there's not even a single photo or comment in pinkbike. Maybe Pinkbike should change is name to Melamedians holly Church, since we always have a photo of our divine god.
It's also possible the photogs might have just missed him. I'm no expert but I'd imagine its fairly hard to cover 50km on a bike, whilst managing to keep ahead of the top riders and lugging around all the camera gear.
As was mentioned lower down we try to cover the top riders of the day (podium) and in this case the season in the overall. We also try to mix up the angles so it's not all repeat of the same action. On a short 4 stage day (where we could only shoot three stages) there simply wasn't a lot of variety to choose from and a lot of riders were missed. Should we have features Jose Borges? Perhaps yes, but was the rider in 5th paramount to a day dedicated to champions? No. Same could be said for riders placed 6-10, and some made it while others did not. In fact Jose Borges was featured last week in the final photo story from Ainsa for his, at the time, career best 6th place finish. Missing him here was not some intentional conspiracy.
As for consipracy about not liking him, only featuring north Americans, or Santa Cruz riders because we all ride their bikes (none of us ride a santa Cruz actually). That's all just false.
Please don't take it personally ... Hopefully Jose builds on that result next year and he will be featured in all the photo recaps.
Cheers
As for the Santa Cruz coincidence, it could be no photogs from PB have SC bikes (surprised) but what about Vital?
Obviously there will be some bias for x or y reasons (photogs being at the right place and time, nice kit colors or absolute random reasons). But I keep finding weird some guys hardly able to make a top 20 get consistent coverage when regular top 20 don't.
why in hell was Mr Trumpore going to post the photo of a guy reading the complete works of Saramago? you want some coverage, win the race or show your privates
Or is it just that Portuguese flag next to your profile giving you an exceptional level of bias.
And where were you last week when we featured Borges for getting 6th in Ainsa? His best result to date and none of you even cared?
The photos are rad keep up the good work. I love Mondays after an EWS so i can see what happened thanks to all you squids.
the thing about lack of comments on the Ainsa race report , and the amount of them here is simply because "we " feel that he deserved to be featured. it's just how humans are like, far more motivated to argue of something that should of been there, than to give props to something that should of been there and was.
The thing is we all expect something about him, a photo or something... In a big event like that and the last one.. we are to excited about his result xD
Anyway I saw the photos from the last round in Spain, like all the others, Dave I hope you keep your excellent work.
Cheers from the Portuguese people.
@nozes
@ddanielascensobabu
I'm not sure where to begin. I guess with "All hail me!" Right?
I can understand why you would be upset with the absence of Borges on here, he is your rider and you want to read about him after a great result! I am biased towards my fellow Canadians when watching DH or XC as well. But there is much more that goes into these photos and many other things that go on you don't know about.
These photographers are amazing but it's entirely possible they didn't get a banger shot of Borges this weekend and so didn't have a photo to post with his result. They did, however, get a sweet photo of his teammate Alex Cure who had his best result of the season in 6th so he was featured. They have to guess a bit to who they think will do well on the weekend to make sure they get those photos. I have proven myself a podium contender for the last few years. And Maybe I get featured a lot because I am friendly to all the photographers and always make time to chat with them and stop to hike sections for them in practice? In this instance I complimented Ross on a sick photo he got of Remi in practice so maybe he did have me in mind when selecting photos for this write up. These are about the stories they tell, I am riding with an unhealed broken hand and managed a 7th place. I was top 10 in every race I finished this season and finished top 10 overall despite 2 missed rounds with broken bones. Success comes in many forms. I think it's great to see Borges have back-to-back top 10 finishes and this could set the precedent of him being featured more next season as someone to look out for.
Give these guys a break, they work damn hard and do everything they can to give us these stories. I appreciate their work and you should too!
Looking forward to seeing more from Borges next season!
Cheers
#weareallborges
Thanks for bringing that up, that's exactly what I was trying to confirm.
that doesn't take the merit out of his results now
I may understand he isn't the most popular racer out there, but without a doubt deserves some coverage. 5th place today, not a single mention.
Would love to see it in writing though, because as a photographer for PB covering the EWS for the past 5 seasons I've yet to be told by anyone from the EWS of PB to to feature and who to exclude.
Please don't make stuff up, fake news never helps anyone.
I didn't think I'd be popping the popcorn for this article. It's turning out to be classic Pinkbike comments section today.
#prayforborges
But seeing him ignored once again made me change my mind.
That being said, thank you for excelent work.
That said it is unfortunate we were not able to provide photos of Borges or Lapeyrie to complete the top 10 in this article.
It got lost in the shuffle between Richie's win and clean sweep of stages (an EWS first), Isabeau battling with Cecile, Martin injuring his hand and losing his podium in the overall, Nicolai then grabing his a podium spot in the overall, ALN with her second podium in a row coming off injury, Kevin Miquel claiming his first podium finish, and all the championship titles won by Sam, Cecile, Eliot and Ella... It's a lot to cover and to be honest Borges slipped by under our radar unintentionally when making a list of "race day happenings"
Consider me triggered...
www.enduroworldseries.com/downloads/EWS-Supporterships15.pdf
"In the packages below you’ll find that Gold Supporters now have the option to join EWS official video content. This includes raw video from each
event, video stories produced with your brand and a behind the scenes look at your team, company and athletes. We want to not only provide more
in-depth stories from everything that makes the Enduro World Series, but also be able to communicate your story too.
As we have achieved so far with your support, we want to keep the Enduro World Series open to all of our supporters and with our new raw video
content pool and linked storytelling, videos and newsletters, we are very excited to bring the EWS to more of our fans and continue hosting some
incredible racing."
Quote from the link above...
We all read into things differently, and i may read the quote above to be something different from the next guy or what it means completely, But every photo epic and video extensively covers the teams that support the series and usually the top few finishers regardless of teams then literally one or two randoms.
Take Keene for an example in this article, Now I've no issue with the guy, seams sound but why has a non top 20 finisher with no story ect in here instead of Borges?
Just like to say i love the content and your work, even met you at the top of La Thuile during the EWS this year there but these articles have a large slant to the teams supporting for whatever reason...
That's a sponsorship package from the Enduro World Series, not Pinkbike (also refers to video not photo but that's even more beside the point).
The EWS has a 4 man video team who shoots all the highlight videos you enjoy after the race, the one minute teaser imediatly after the race, as well as the track preview videos. That same EWS video team makes that footage available to top tier series sponsors for those brands to create their own content with.
No where does it say that the 2-3 Pinkbike photographers or editorial staff, who have zero affiliation the with the Enduro World Series, will provide coverage of their team in their independent editorial coverage.
Additionally there is no mention of Keene in the above article so not sure what you are referring to. Yes he was included last round in context of his teammate Jared having brain surgery.
These photo features are indeed slanted to the best teams and the best riders, and it should really not be a huge surprise that coincidentally the tops teams also are the ones paying to support the series as top riders and race programs require large budgets. That doesn't mean PB is paid for content via the EWS contratcs.
Cheers
I enjoy the vids and photo epics, cheers for the good work, Just a fan of the show here hoping to see more of the story instead of getting 6 photos of rude every round, even tho hes an animal!
Regards.
Sorry but the editorial staff, the content we generate or the photos we take has nothing to do with that ;-)
See an above post for all the "stories covered" from yesterday's race. They are quite numerous. Even though the guy outside the top 10 in the overall seems to be a hot button issue today.
FYI... Rude won last week, he won this week, he's a two time world champ, won the round in France, won the most stages in Chile, and lead in Whistler until the final stage.
I'd say that's deserving of being part of the story in every race he enters, no?
I hope we meet next year in Madeira, the first poncha is on me.
Absolutely... Welcome to the Age Of Offence.
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