Yeti's Best Enduro Results & 3 More Things We Learned From the Derby Enduro World Cup 2023
Following an incredible weekend in Maydena, Derby brought more drama and top racing action as the 2023 Enduro World Cup continued. The second Australian round saw a completely different challenge for riders with plenty of mud and rain during practice to shake things up for finals. Here are a few of the things we spotted from the second Enduro World Cup.
A Podium Domination for the Yeti Team
As the racing wrapped up in Derby, we could have seen the best weekend of racing for the Yeti team as it took both Elite wins as well as 2nd in the men. The Yeti team is stacked with top riders in 2023, adding Slawomir Lukasik alongside the already strong combo of Bex Baraona and Richie Rude in the off-season. Along with having some of the fastest riders on its roster, the team also headed out to Tasmania slightly earlier than other riders and took part in the Trans Tasmania Enduro, featuring two rounds in Maydena and two in Derby. Across the five-race series, Bex Baraona won all rounds, with Richie securing three and Slawomir two in the men's racing. While it may have given the racers an advantage it didn't seem to pay off quite as well in Maydena as Richie finished 7th, Slawomir 12th and Bex 4th.
Not a Weekend for the DH Riders
After the very downhill-orientated racing at Maydena that even included a previous DH national champs course, Derby was a very different challenge for riders with no shuttling and lots of pedalling across both liaisons and the race stages. Whereas the opening round saw riders climbing for 1248 meters with 2511 meters of descent, Derby had 1444 meters of climbing and descending.
With around double the descending as climbing at round one, we saw a domination of DH riders as Vali Höll almost beat Isabeau Courdurier for the overall win before a crash and four of the top five Elite Men as either dedicated DH riders or multiple discipline riders like Luke Meier-Smith, Dan Booker and Connor Fearon. The DH riders didn't fair quite as well in Derby with Vali Höll missing the main race, Dan Booker in 8th place, Luke Meier-Smith 17th and Connor Fearon 24th.
France & the UK are Still the Only Elite Women's Race Winners
Carrying on from that is the fight building between Britain and France's best riders. While Maydena saw the French top two of Isabeau Coudurier and Morgane Charre, we saw this flipped in Derby as the British took control, with Bex Baraona, Hattie Harnden and Ella Conolly taking over the podium. The wet and tricky conditions may have felt right at home for Bex, Hattie and Ella in Derby and they were facing an injured Isabeau who still managed an impressive fourth place despite a big crash in practice. A fourth place for Isabeau is her worst result from Derby after she won the previous two EWS races at this venue. It will be interesting to see if the British riders can beat an Isabeau without injury at the next round.
Based on the first two rounds it looks like the Enduro World Cup has not changed tradition from the EWS, where since 2013 there has not been an Elite Women's race winner from a country other than France or the UK. From what we have seen so far we don't expect this to change through 2023 as the competition between the five women at the top from rounds one and two is going to be fierce and very exciting to watch unfold.
No More Home Advantage?
The opening round of the Enduro World Cup saw a shakeup in the results for the Elite Men as we saw the Australians dominate on home soil. Although riders only travelled four hours down the road for round two in Derby, the previous two-time EWS venue provided a different challenge for riders and we saw a return to more expected top ten featuring the likes of Richie Rude, Jesse Melamed, Jack Moir and Martin Maes, of which only one made it inside the top ten at round one. Only three of round one's top ten achieved the same at round two - Youn Deniaud was the only one of these three to improve his result moving from 9th to 6th place.
It is interesting to see that while there were a lot of Australian riders performing well at round one we saw the top ten filled with EWS regulars in Derby. We believe that Maydena could have offered a greater advantage to locals as a first-time venue but in Derby some of the riders have previously raced this once or even twice, and some of the stages were exactly the same.
In a showing of how seriously close and competitive the Elite Women's field is, the fastest five riders were the same at both rounds. The order would be changed as the French top two in Maydena was swapped with a British top three in Derby. We are going to be taking a deeper dive into the stats on the local riders' results in an article coming later this week.
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Troy and Connor are both from South Aus - which is approx 1500km from Maydena, Luke, Ryan and Moir are from NSW - approx 1700 km from Maydena.
Maybe the real hometown advantage here is that the riders haven’t had to fly 20+ hrs to race, and they have their families friends and support networks around them.
Fun fact - you can swim from England to France.. yet no one has ever swam from Melbourne to Hobart, because its waaay further, so this whole emphasis on a hometown advantage arguement is about as good as saying the UK riders have a hometown advantage in France.
It seems to be the primary narrative about why they were successful, I’m just putting it into perspective.
The first round was for some their first big race of the year, but for those down under it has been prime racing season for awhile already.
Q: Why don’t Yetis have storage in their downtubes?
A: Everyone knows dentists hate cavities.
Wow, didn't know that
Just old and grumpy but I loved the pure self support, no shuttles or lifts. Back to yelling at the clouds
A local race doesnt count, as the top Dh racers are not giving that race their all, they have WC's for that!
www.rootsandrain.com/compare37433,11649
Kicking horse 2020?
What the results do show is that Finn iwas faster than Jesse at Enduro.
Maybe Finn has been lucky in 3 out of the 4 times they have raced each other. (Who doesnt love roots and rain to settle these debates)
Bigger news is Giant has never won a EWS type race before. Not only did they have first place, but Youn has been giving it for a couple years and moving up the ranks including Pro Stage wins and podiums. Along with McKay moving up also.
Original: Whereas the opening round saw riders climbing for 1248 meters with 2511 meters of descent, Derby switched this up completely with a drop to 1444 meters of climbing and descent.
Something that makes sense: The opening round saw riders climbing for 1248 meters with 2511 meters of descending. Derby had slightly more climbing but significantly less descending with 1444 meters both up and down.