After his 2nd place in Cairns, his 3rd place in Albstadt and last weekend's 2nd place in La Bresse, BH SRSuntour KMC rider Maxime Marotte has tightened his grip on third place overall in the World Cup standings. He is unquestionably one of the top rider's in the world at the moment.
Maxime's French compatriot and team mate, Victor Koretzky provided arguably the ride of the weekend by finishing 3rd from his gridding of 28th.
It's no wonder the Olympic legend Bart Brentchens has widely tipped Viktor as the successor to Absalon's crown. On the final lap he rode on with a rapidly deflating rear tyre, nursing his bike through the rocky descents with so much maturity. It's hard to believe that strictly speaking he is an under 23 category rider. The gap to 4th place was still a sizeable 18 seconds despite his last lap technical.
Thanks to the elite men's double podium and an impressive 7th place from Jordan Sarrou, the BH SRSUNTOUR KMC won the team classification in La Bresse and moved up to 2nd place in the overall ranking.
The XC World Cup 2016 kicked off with a podium in the U23 men's category. Titouan Carod took 3rd place after a very tight final sprint. Following his 3rd place in Cairns and 2nd place in Albstadt, Titouan Carod from the SCOTT Creuse Oxygene Gueret team finally got his long awaited and hard earned victory in the men's U23 category. He dominated the race from the start and won by over 2 minutes.
In the elite women category Adelheid Morath from BH SRSUNTOUR KMC rode very strongly and intelligently to finish in an excellent 7th place.
In the U23 women's category Anne Tauber from the Felt Habitat team showed tremendous consistancy by finishing in third place, the same position as the week before in Albstadt. Two consecutive podiums in two consecutive weeks. |
