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August 28, 2022
Mountain Bike World Championships 2022 – XCO WE – Les Gets
The Mountain Bike World Championships come around once a season and are the most coveted and hard fought race of the year.
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August 28, 2022
Mountain Bike World Championships 2022 – XCO WE – Les Gets
The Mountain Bike World Championships come around once a season and are the most coveted and hard fought race of the year. To be victorious means wearing the biggest prize in cycling – the Rainbow Jersey. Win it and you become a legend and go down in cycling history for eternity. This year’s World Championships take place in Les Gets, an Alpine ski resort that’s played host to countless top-tier mountain bike competitions over the past thirty years. The French commune has even hosted the Mountain Bike World Championships once already in 2004. Riders from all over the globe will have been competing all year in national races and – for many – on the UCI World Cup circuit, accumulating UCI points to compete for the overall World Cup title.
Cross Country races are typically held on varied terrain; with a mix of roads, tracks, dirt, sand and rocks. Courses have many obstacles to negotiate – artificial and natural – and often incorporate ramps and berms, jumps, drops and short, sharp hills; not to mention nerve-racking descents! Riders have to fight gravity as well as benefit from it.Races start en masse and it’s always a drag race to the first corner. The Les Gets course is one of the most challenging on the world circuit with some gruelling climbs and several areas where the riders’ technical ability will be really put to the test.
On Sunday, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot joined Norway’s Gunn-Rita Dahle Flesja as the only women to have won four Elite XCO world titles. She did in front of an appreciative home crowd in Les Gets, France, with a dominant performance at the 2022 the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships.
Jolanda Neff (Switzerland) took the silver, 1:35 back, while Haley Batten (USA) finished another 38 seconds later and secured the bronze.
Ferrand-Prévot made no secret of the fact that winning the world title in France was her number one priority for the season, skipping the two North American rounds of the World Cup to focus on training.
It paid off, with the French rider, who recently won the European title, riding away from the rest of the field on the first lap. She had 30 seconds on a chase group by the end of the opening circuit, 1:35 over second place by the finish and 10th place was more than five minutes down at the end. Less than half the field finished the race on the same lap; rarely is such dominance seen at the world championships.
The race was behind for second, with Batten, Loana Lecomte (France) and Alessandra Keller (Switzerland) initially battling for the remaining medals. Lecomte was dropped after the second lap, with Batten and Keller left in the chasing positions.
However, Olympic Champion Neff surged mid-race to join the duo by lap 4, and then attacked a lap later. Batten was able to follow initially before dropping back to third. Neff made little headway on Ferrand-Prévot, but was able to hold on to second for the silver medal, with Batten taking third.
“Right now I feel exhausted, but it is incredible,” said Ferrand-Prévot. “I made the choice to go with a hardtail bike because I knew that I could go faster on the climbs. It was a bit risky, but I wanted to go straight from the start, to go full gas and try to make a gap, and I did it. After that, I just had to be soft and clean on the downhills.
“Right now it feels like a dream and I can’t believe it. But I want to see my parents and my friends. After that, I think I will know.”
Results :
 took the silver, 1:35 back, while Haley Batten (USA) finished another 38 seconds later and secured the bronze.
Ferrand-Prévot made no secret of the fact that winning the world title in France was her number one priority for the season, skipping the two North American rounds of the World Cup to focus on training.
It paid off, with the French rider, who recently won the European title, riding away from the rest of the field on the first lap. She had 30 seconds on a chase group by the end of the opening circuit, 1:35 over second place by the finish and 10th place was more than five minutes down at the end. Less than half the field finished the race on the same lap; rarely is such dominance seen at the world championships.
The race was behind for second, with Batten, Loana Lecomte (France) and Alessandra Keller (Switzerland) initially battling for the remaining medals. Lecomte was dropped after the second lap, with Batten and Keller left in the chasing positions.
However, Olympic Champion Neff surged mid-race to join the duo by lap 4, and then attacked a lap later. Batten was able to follow initially before dropping back to third. Neff made little headway on Ferrand-Prévot, but was able to hold on to second for the silver medal, with Batten taking third.
"Right now I feel exhausted, but it is incredible," said Ferrand-Prévot. "I made the choice to go with a hardtail bike because I knew that I could go faster on the climbs. It was a bit risky, but I wanted to go straight from the start, to go full gas and try to make a gap, and I did it. After that, I just had to be soft and clean on the downhills.
"Right now it feels like a dream and I can't believe it. But I want to see my parents and my friends. After that, I think I will know."
<strong>Results : </strong>
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