After a flat out practice and Timed Training session on the revised Maribor track, riders faced a real challenge and with few lines to choose from it was all about raw speed. Camille Balanche and Loris Vergier went fastest in Timed Training, but qualifying is where we will really see how fast riders can hit the course.
In the Junior racing, Gracey Hemstreet and Jordan Williams came out fastest with some big winning margins against the rest of the field. Jordan Williams, the fastest rider in the Junior Men's category, crossed the line with a time good enough for an Elite top-four finish in yesterday's timed training.
Vali Höll is looking to be back up to full speed in Maribor as she goes nearly three seconds faster than Myriam Nicole to take the top qualifying time. Camille Balanche sits in third,
3.490 seconds off Vali Höll and Eleonora Farina is the only other Elite Woman to come within four seconds of the fastest time.
Loris Vergier backed up his fastest run in Timed Training with the top Qualifying time today. Thibaut Daprela is charging hard after his win in Les Gets and crossed the line in second after going green at every split. The race could be very tight between these two tomorrow a no other rider has been able to break the 3:10.085 time of Vergier's Timed Training run.
Check out the full results below.
Results:
Elite Women
1st. Vali Höll: 3:38.634
2nd. Myriam Nicole: 3:41.355
3rd. Camille Balanche: 3:42.124
4th. Eleonora Farina: 3:42.487
5th. Monika Hrastnik: 3:44.501
Elite Men
1st. Loris Vergier: 3:07.858
2nd. Thibaut Daprela: 3:08.154
3rd. Laurie Greenland: 3:11.233
4th. Greg Minnaar: 3:11.384
5th. Matt Walker: 3:12.315
Junior Women
1st. Gracey Hemstreet: 4:00.122
2nd. Leona Pierrini: 4:02.989
3rd. Simonka Kuchynkova: 4:03.206
4th. Sophie Gutoehrle: 4:04.252
5th. Phoebe Gale: 4:05.934
Junior Men
1st. Jordan Williams: 3:12.764
2nd. Lachlan Stevens-McNab: 3:19.338
3rd. Ethan Craik: 3:19.572
4th. Tristan Lemire: 3:20.251
5th. Christopher Grice: 3:21.454
Full Results:Elite Women [Protected riders and those ranked 1-15 Qualify for the final]Elite Men [Protected riders and those ranked 1-60 Qualify for the final]Junior Women [Riders who start qualify for the final]Junior Men [Protected riders and those ranked 1-25 Qualify for the final]
my team is B. Kerr, Angel Alonso, Daprela and Vergier. I taught this would be the round to get me some sweet points but maybe its still possible even with BK out! The poser thing was a joke!!!!
Benoit Coulanges $200,000
Andreas Kolb $150,000
Loris Vergier. $550,000
Charlie Hatton $125,000
Camille Balanche $425,000
Agnes Delest $10,000
Vergier is a given for top 3, he's not gonna have another bad luck day. Kolb and Hatten are young and fresh, ready to over-exceed. Also expect Minnar in the top 5.
Fully expect Holl to crash again in the dust on double 29" wheels and hand it over to Camille.
Ignore, his splits have now been corrected
But hey! He qualified today.
it.memedroid.com/memes/detail/2317550/Olympics
There’s probably not a bigger Neko Mullally fan out there who isn’t related to him. I have so much respect for him as a rider and even more respect for his work to grow the American DH scene. Living more or less in the southeast, I want nothing more than to see him keep building and developing our scene.
It doesn’t offend me at all to see him still competing, and I love listening to him and Elliot recap the races on the Downtime podcast. He should race as long as he’s able, but selfishly, I think his bigger contributions to DH will be in how he develops the scene more than his results at World Cups.
You can be protected if you ranked in the top ten in the previous season or if you're in the top ten in the current season, excluding the top ten from the previous year (so since Matt Walker won last year, he's protected this season but doesn't count for one of the top ten of this season).
Cathro gives a good explanation of how it works here- www.pinkbike.com/news/video-ben-cathro-explains-uci-protected-rider-rule-2018-start-list.html