Race Report: World Cup Warm Up at Round 1 of the Portugal Cup DH

Well, I'm going to start this blog with a sentence that should be at last: IT WAS A HELL OF A RACE!

Currently, Portugal has three main training spots at a world class level: Lousã, Ponte de Lima and Tarouca. Each and every year we are seeing more and more riders and teams from Europe traveling to Portugal to spend the last few weeks of their off-season program, taking advantage of the good weather, good food and a variety of good trails for testing setups.
That's what happened in Tarouca, a combination of theses factors turned this event the best place to riders and teams test their progress and compare themselves with the rest of the pack.

Knowing this, the Portuguese crowd woke up from the last World Cup in Lousã and headed to Tarouca to cheer and support their Heroes.

What I'm going to show you further down isn't a photo epic or a race report because there are a ton of missing subjects like, pits vibes, public, emotional moments and so, but I felt that these few pictures could give you a taste of what this year World Cup will be.

T R A I N I N G

Q U A L I F Y I N G

F I N A L S

Can't wait to see how riders will perform in Lourdes but one thing is true: it's gonna be a tight one!

RESULTS

Qualifying Results

Final Results