At the world championships 2008 in Val di Sole/ Italy the favorites felt like dominos. Sam Hill crashed in the DH at the second last corner with almost 10 seconds in lead. The hope for the rainbow jersey of Jared Graves and Roger Rinderknecht got killed in the first corner of the finals in 4X and Julian Absalon got knocked out in cross country.

Also Anneke Beerten of the MS- INTENSE FACTORY- RACING team was the favorite in the women’s 4X, but the characteristics, which make 4X that interesting become Anneke’s doom.

This is her official statement:

After starting this season with 2 World Cup wins and leader in the World Cup series, I was heading with a good feeling to World Championships. This years world champs was held in Val di sole, Italy. It was a great venue and the crowed was massive on Saturday evening.

 

Racing was going to be good, the track was nice and we almost had as much women in 4-cross as in Downhill!! I qualified fastest and went trough the first couple of heats on to the final. I had my best gate ever in the final and was leading until the second to last turn…. I went a little bit wide to keep my speed but then the girl in second came on the inside of me and bumped me of the track! That was it… worlds was over and out…. 4th place.

 

It’s hard to say in words how I feel… But I am really disappointed. We are only half way the season and I am going to focusing on the next couple of World Cups now.

We sympathize with Anneke. Even it would have been more than cool to have somebody with the rainbow jersey in the team we all know that the world championships has it’s own rules and so we are not too worried about not winning this title.

Beside these negative surprises there happened some really positive incidents like the domination of the Atherton family by winning the DH title in women (Rachel won with a 12 seconds lead) and men elite, the 5th place of Mio Suemasa in the women’s DH race and the 8th place of MS- RACING friend Lisi Osl from Austria in the cross country women elite race.

Complete results:

DH- Women
DH- Men

4X- Women
4X- Men

CC- Women
CC- Men

Now we are looking forward to the next worldcup races. Stay tuned and keep watching the livestream of the mountainbike worldcup on freecaster.tv

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