Cycling: This year's Crankworx Festival started with a bang this weekend. After a break of only two weeks, the Enduro World Series entered the sixth and penultimate round. Jared Graves prevailed again and got his third win of the season. Cecile Ravanel caused a sensation with her first EWS victory and relegated the two top favorites Moseley and Chausson to their places.
One of the toughest races of the season awaited the riders of the Enduro World Series in Whistler. With five stages, almost 2300 meters of altitude and 3300 meters of descent, the riders had to manage their strength well, and the entire race was completed in one day. The riders sat in the saddle for up to nine hours and had to contend with dry and dusty, but above all steep, trails.
Winding, narrow, steep with many stones and roots would describe the trails well with just a few words and as different as they were, there were surprisingly many different stage winners.
Stage one had a few surprises in store. Rookie Martin Maes secured the first best time. The junior winner from 2013 is riding his first elite season and has already proven several times that he has to be on the list of favorites.
With a lead of just under a second and a half, he managed the perfect start to the race, closely followed by Damien Oton and Nico Lau, both of whom have already won a race this year.
The unlucky one of the first stage was undoubtedly Jared Graves. After his victory in Colorado he went into the race in Whistler as a big favorite, but was forced to go home due to a defect. His fork lost a lot of air on stage one and so the Australian struggled a lot more with the weak fork than with the stopwatch. He lost more than 17 seconds early in the day and went into the transfer stage with less good prospects.
For the women, it was hard to believe when Cecile Ravanel crossed the finish line. The French ousted Anne Caroline Chausson and Tracy Moseley from the top two places to set the best time ahead of Chausson. Just under six seconds separated her from her compatriot and so there was tension.
[iframe src=”https://mpora.de/videos/AAdv0gia48oh/embed” width=”620″ height=”349″ iframe]In the following stages, no clear favorite emerged. While Jared Graves was struggling with his broken fork and trying to inflate it with a CO2 cartridge, which was now far too tight, Whistler local Jesse Melamed took victory on stage two. On the women's side, Chausson slowly but surely turned the tables and drew level with Ravanel. On stages three and four it was again Chausson who secured the best time and extended her lead. The toughest task of the day, however, awaited at the end.
The longest trail of the day , the Top of the World Trail, awaited the riders. Just before taking the lift to the start, the riders were allowed into the pits, giving Jared Graves the opportunity to prepare his bike for the final stage. Last year, he managed to challenge Jerome Clementz for the win on this trail, and this year, his focus was again on the final stage.
The women were the first to start the 20 minute race. Anne Caroline Chausson got a puncture in the upper part and lost valuable time. Tracy Moseley was also struggling. After the previous stages she was too exhausted to win a stage here and so it was Cecile Ravanel who secured the best time and victory with a great ride. Tracy Moseley was able to move up to second place due to Chausson's defect.
Belgian Martin Maes suffered the same bad luck as Chausson. He went into the last stage as the leader, but was unable to pedal due to a broken chain and lost a lot of time. One driver after the other crossed the finish line and Californian Curtis Keene took the lead for the time being. However, Nico Lau drove a solid and above all consistently good race. He kept everything together and took first place with only a few riders left on the track. One of them: Jared Graves. The Yeti team rider was fed up after the first four stages and, like last year, made it his task to make up for lost time on stage five. And that's exactly what he did. He put in an excellent run and made up so much time that he ended up winning with a total time of 58:04.15 minutes.
Nico Lau took second, just under 2,5 seconds back, followed by Curtis Kenne.
The full results are HERE.