The 26th World Championships were everything the ‘race of the year’ was billed up to be. Held in the Principality of Andorra, which is located in the Pyrenees, home of 85,000 people it was fair to say this was one event which had a lot of people talking about the place. The lead up to the race is always different from you regular world cups, there is no qualifying and the schedule looks different from what we are use to.
Legendary racer, turned commentator, Rob Warner was gauging the riders feedback all week and the overall consensus was that the track was definitely up to the task of holding a world championships. The weather was pretty average for the majority of the event, the sun was out on Sunday for the finals though.
The majority of riders survived practice in the lead up to the event, only a few registered a DNS. Now as a spectator worlds is a stomach churning affair so you can only imagine what it is like for the racers, Rachel Atherton even had to vomit, that’s how much it means to these racers! Moving onto race day and it was the juniors off first, the junior women to be exact! For Australia it was Ellie Wale representing with a 6th place. Turning to junior men, in his first worlds foray Jackson Frew was Australia’s highest placed finisher taking the bronze medal. Australia’s most likely winner, Andrew Crimmins, who has had a stellar world cup season crashed and finished well down the order. It was his game plan of all or nothing, in this case he rolled the dice and the house won but have no doubt he will be back a stronger rider next year.
Next came the women and the track was drying out more but the wooded sections were still quite slippery and caught more than a few riders off guard. Moving up from last year saw Tegan Molloy racing the senior class, unfortunately a tumble saw her hopes of a win evaporate. After an up and down season Tracey Hannah finished on a high note with another bronze medal for Australia, Manon Carpenter got close but couldn’t hold onto the rainbow stripes from last year with a silver medal. In the end it was the dominant rider of 2015, Rachel Atherton, who took the jersey back to the UK with her.
The tension had been steadily rising all day and when the men kicked off everyone was excited! Spectators lined the course, riders headed to the top with trainers, photographers checked their memory cards and like that we were racing! Coming down were some riders who wouldn’t normally qualify for world cups so it was great to see this mix. There were also plenty of crashes as wooden bridges, roots and the general steep nature of the track caught riders off guard.
After four second place finishes this year it was Loic Bruni who made his first win the most important one! He took the world championship jersey and with that a huge weight off his shoulders. Greg Minnaar and his Santa Cruz team mate Josh Bryceland were second and third respectively. For the other contenders it was a case of what could have been with names such as Atherton and Gwin crashing out.
That wraps up the 2015 international season, what a ride and what a great way to finish it off!
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