MTB – EDR – World Cup 2024 – 2 – Bielsko-Biała [Highlights]

May 19, 2024

MTB – EDR – World Cup 2024 – 2 – – Bielsko-Biała, Poland 🇵🇱

Enduro is mountain biking’s equivalent of a car rally – each racer faces multiple descents across a day and has to pedal themselves to the top of each. They have a set start time for each stage and the shortest cumulative time on the stages wins!

After Friday’s nail-biting conclusion to the UCI Enduro World Cup in Bielsko-Biała, thousands of fans returned to the trails of the Beskid Mountains’ venue on Saturday, May 18 for the UCI E-Enduro World Cup.

Riders faced a nine-stage race that included two loops of the Polish course and would tackle 52.7km including liaisons and 3,038m descent. Five stages would be repeats of those used during the previous day’s Enduro event, giving the athletes doubling up the edge on a relatively unknown course, while stages four and seven were the only power stages.

While Friday’s wet conditions had played a big role in the outcome and riders were rewarded at times for playing it safe and staying upright, Saturday was warm and sunny, allowing the course to dry out slightly and guarantee some fast, flowy racing.

Espiñeira dominates for the second week in a row

In the women’s field, last week’s event in Finale showed that the 2023 overall title winner Florencia Espiñeira (Orbea Fox Enduro Team) was starting her title defense in peak form. The Chilean won four out of nine stages and overcame a spirited challenge from Tracy Moseley to hold on to the top spot.

Moseley was again likely to be Espiñera’s biggest challenge from the five-strong field, and the veteran Brit rolled back the years to edge the first stage by three seconds. Although she had announced during Thursday’s press conference that she didn’t plan on racing all of this year’s UCI E-Enduro World Cups, she wasn’t in Poland to make up the numbers.

Espiñeira responded – and hard – winning six out of the eight remaining stages, finishing second in the other two, and holding the lead from stage three onwards. It is this consistency that helped win her the title last year, and with her main competitor sitting out some rounds of the 2024 WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series, it’s hard to see how she won’t retain the championship.

Despite Espiñeira’s dominance, Moseley managed to limit her losses to under 10 seconds – winning two more stages to finish in second. There was a slight gulf to Laura Charles in third, who completed the same podium from Finale last time out.

Speaking after the race, Florence Espiñeira said: “It feels great. It’s a good start for the season. I’m relieved and happy to continue like this. It was very tight all the time. At the point where I thought I had a nice cushion of time, Tracy smoked me back and it all went down to the last stage. I was all or nothing for it.”

During Friday’s UCI Enduro World Cup, the collective crowd of Poles lining the Bielsko-Biała course was willing their local star Slawomir Lukasik (Yeti/Fox Factory Race Team) to the win, but it wasn’t enough – the national champion missing out on his first UCI Enduro World Cup win by nine-hundredths of a second to Charles Murray (Specialized Enduro Team), despite winning the last three stages.

What a difference 24 hours makes. Lukasik returned to the course on Saturday as a last-minute entrant to the UCI E-Enduro World Cup, and set about demolishing the rest of the field in front of a baying home crowd.

The 31-year-old led from the start, winning the first three stages to build up what would be an unassailable lead. Team-mate and last week’s winner Ryan Gilchrist (Yeti/Fox Factory Race Team) seemed like he might be able to provide some serious competition but was slowed down by having to plug a puncture on stage one before it failed again on stage five, after which he received a brand-new tyre.

While Gilchrist was hampered with his flat, Manuel Soares José Borges (Canyon CLLCTV Factory Enduro Team) was able to seize the initiative, flying on the downhill stage five to edge into second place.

Neither Gilchrist or Borges were able to seize the initiative when Lukasik struggled on the second power stage and finished 10th, leaving the local hero with enough of a buffer to take the final stage easy in front of a carnival-like atmosphere. A crash on the eighth stage put a dent in Gilchrist’s hopes of making it a Yeti/Fox Factory Race Team one-two, and the Australian had to settle for third behind Borges.

Speaking at the end of the race, Slawomir Lukasik said: “It feels amazing. After yesterday, I was happy but not [like] right now. I’m pretty stoked about this weekend. I didn’t feel any pressure or expectation – it was just having fun and riding fast. It was a nice day. It’s amazing racing at home and [have] a lot of people cheering me – it’s a really great feeling.”

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