Rachel Atherton on top of the world
Rachel Atherton won gold at the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup leg in Austria.
The racer, who lives near Oswestry, secured her 35th World Cup win at Leogang – and it was the 100thWorld Cup win by a Brit with a further nine going to brother Gee, who also raced in Austria.
It was also a first World Cup win of the season for the 30-year-old four-time world downhill champion.
Leogang has never been one of Rachel’s favourite tracks, with the emphasis more on speed than technical ability, but some course changes including a tricky off-camber corner at the start of the track had all the riders excited for the challenge.
Rachel went into he race hungry for the win after an amazing chainless run at Fort William last week resulted in a third place but she didn’t qualify well, going down hard in a rut.
Her bike got tangled on a pole and that cost her a lot of time, leaving her in 16th place. When Rachel came on track there were still seven women at the top of the hill and Australia’s Sian Ahern was in the hotseat.
However, Rachel came out fast. Carrying a lot of speed through the technical off-camber section, she was up five seconds on Ahern by split one, extending her lead to a massive 10 seconds by split three.
She had a tiny stall but she recovered well, crossing the line almost 12 seconds clear.
But her stay in the hotseat wasn’t an easy time, just two runs later France’s Myriam Nicole was in touch from the start, moving to within 0.5 by split three. She gained on Rachel through the woods going 0.5 clear of the leader by split four but post the final split a ragged ride lost her time – she crossed into second 0.6 seconds back from Rachel.
Then all eyes were on Rachel’s neighbour and fellow Brit Tahnee Seagrave. She dropped low on the off camber section, recovered well but she was 0.8 down by the first split, 1.6 down by split two. She looked as if she would cross into third place but disaster struck, she was blown off course and outside the tapes over the jumps and disqualified.
Myriam Nicole now leads the overall standings by just 10 points with 610 to Rachel’s 600.
