Qualification 2:
Qualifying went pretty good for the MS Mondraker Team. We will see all riders in Sunday’s race. With a 3rd place Eleonora pulled out another top result, Brook sent it into 28th place and Mike by the skin of his teeth crashed his way into 57th place. The weather forecast for the race is overclauded, but now rain, we will see if this changes the track to the worse or better.
race day 1:
What a day- Eleonora started with a crash this morning, just one hour before she had to get back up to the start for her race run, but nevertheless she managed to get down a solid run, maybe a little bit conservative, but good enough to finish in 4th place. First world cup in 2020 and first podium for her- we can’t complain.
Mike had a good run, but unclipped in before the rock garden and couldn’t clip in again. He rode the rock garden unclipped, clipped in after the section and fought into the finish. The effort got rewarded with an 18th place, which is a good start into the 2020 season. For Brook it doesn’t went as planned. He couldn’t unclip in a slippery section to put his foot out and crashed. Not a big crash, but big enough to lose some seconds, which throw him back in the final ranking to 39th place. Probably not what he expected, but Brook is building his way back up and there is no doubt we will see him back in his natural habitat: the world cup podium.
Qualification 1:
Qualification ended with mixed feelings. Ele had a little crash, but finished in 5th. She was not happy with the result, but in general happy with her performance. Mike had a so-so run, but qualified in 33rd position. Brook had a crash in the top section. He slid out in a corner, but managed to get back on the bike and finished in 54th place. As he was protected he would have been qualified anyway and he will still start in the flied of the top contenders.
Practice:
We are finally back to world cup racing and Maribor is usually a good start if the season starts in spring ad not in autumn. Brook, Mike and Ele had a good day out in the woods and learned the track pretty quick, so they could get up to race pace. Conditions will be different for qualification and race day as rain is forecasted. Maribor what a beautiful place on Indian summer days…
Track walk:
Back to world cup racing. Round one of the 2020 UCI MTB world cup takes place in Maribor Slovenia. The conditions are like to expect that late in the season, changeable weather conditions, with the track being covered in leaves and the light is getting dark pretty early already. Beside all the new restrictions we have because of Covid we also have a new situation regarding race. Both race in Maribor and Lousa are supposed to be double races, which means we have qualification 1 on Thursday and race 1 on Friday and qualification 2 on Saturday and race 2 on Sunday.
This is on one hand double the chance, but also double the effort and difficult for riders as they have to learn 2 different tracks in sections and they only have the normal amount of training time. Stay tuned on RedBull.Tv and follow the race.