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Marie-Héléne Prémont's final World Cup race at Mont Ste. Anne
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With just a handful of weeks to go until the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, the world's top cross-country mountain bikers face two World Cup rounds to get their legs race ready. This weekend’s World Cup race, held at Mont-Ste-Anne resort just outside of Quebec City, is the first test, with Bromont, Quebec, hosting a round on August 2-3.
But who, exactly, will show up for the Canadian races?
The races sit highly on the priority list of North America’s top pros — anytime the World Cup heads to this side of the Atlantic, Canadian and American riders gear up for the home-field advantage. For North Americans Geoff Kabush (Maxxis), Todd Wells (GT), Adam Craig (Giant), Seamus McGrath (Fuji), Marie-Héléne Prémont (Rocky Mountain), Mary McConneloug (Kenda-Seven), Georgia Gould and Catherine Pendrel (both Luna) — who are all preparing for Beijing — the Canadian World Cup rounds hold extra importance.
That’s not the case for European riders and their teams, which might see their traveling budget better spent preparing for Beijing closer to home. At the onset of the 2008 season many Europeans, including current world champ Christoph Sauser (Specialized), said they were going to forego the Canadian World Cups to prepare for Beijing at home.
Sauser has changed his mind. His French rival Julien Absalon (Orbea) has said he will show up for the Canadian races, and currently sits only 15 points behind the Swiss rider in the World Cup standings. With Sauser looking to hold the World Cup overall, which he last won in 2005, he has chosen to race Mont-Ste-Anne, but then skip Bromont.
Depending on how many European strongmen and women sit out the Mont-Ste-Anne race, the door could be opened for a Canadians or American rider to ascend the podium. So far in 2008 only Kabush and Prémont have landed inside the top three at World Cup races.
Prémont has earned enough podium finishes to don the white jersey of the World Cup points leader. Currently the Canadian leads recently crowned world champ Marga Fullana (Massi) of Spain 970-910 in the overall standings.
Many Quebecer fans will undoubtedly travel to Mont-Ste-Anne to catch one final glimpse of Prémont racing before she hangs it up at the end of 2008. Just 32, Prémont announced last year she would retire following the 2008 games to start a family. She’s a celebrity at Mont-Ste-Anne, having won the venue’s World Cup cross-country in 2005 and 2006. Prémont also grew up a short drive from the mountain, and pedaled her first dirt miles on Mont-Ste-Anne’s trails.
Mont-Ste-Anne resort has hosted a stop on the UCI World Cup of mountain bike racing every year since the series’s inception in 1991. As sponsorship woes during the last half-decade shrunk the World Cup into a Euro-centric series, Mont-Ste-Anne emerged as the only reliable North American round left standing. The key to Mont-Ste-Anne’s longevity is in its ability to put heads in hotel beds, and attract throngs of spectators and amateur racers to the mountain.
The World Cup is the marquee event in three consecutive weekends of pro/am and kids mountain bike racing at the resort. The three-week festival, called Velirium, hosts nine amateur races including a round of the provincial Quebec Cup and a national Canada Cup event. Not including the World Cup, the mountain will host approximately 2000 race starts during the three weekends.
The festival also includes live bands, a Saturday night rave and a rich party atmosphere.
The mountain’s rooty, rocky cross-country course is both a test of one’s fitness and technical skills, and the steep downhill course tests an athlete’s ability ride at extremely high speed.
In the past two years that downhill course has been to the liking of Australian Sam Hill (Monster-Ironhorse), whose dominance of the sport began with his world championship win in 2006. Hill took control of the World Cup in 2007, winning the lion’s share of the biggest races in the world.
Things haven’t gone swimmingly for Hill so far in 2008 — he only has one World Cup victory to his name and he lost the world champion’s stripes to Brit Gee Atherton (Animal-Commençal) at the world championships in Val di Sole in June. And after that race the soft spoken Australian hinted that, while his body was firing on all cylinders, his focus was off.
The race weekend features a handful of other battles worth following, including the men and women’s Four Cross and downhill battles, which will play out on the evening of Saturday, July 26. Stay tuned to www.velonews.com for news and updates from the Mont-Ste-Anne World Cup.
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