Loana Lecomte (France) added to her sparkling palmares winning her first elite women’s cross-country mountain bike title at the European Championships in Munich on Saturday.
Thriving in the rain and mud conditions, Lecomte took the victory ahead of her compatriot Pauline Ferrand-Prévot by 37 seconds and Anne Terpstra (Netherlands) by 3:08 in Munich.
“I’m very happy for today’s race because I like all conditions, but when there is rain and a lot of mud, I know a lot of riders don’t like these condition. It’s every time, a pleasure to ride in the mud because it’s fun and I like it,” Lecomte said.
The women raced 30km across a 4.27km-course at the Olympiapark for seven laps. The initial laps of the race was hampered by bad weather. Right from the start the two French riders Ferrand-Prévot and Lecomte stayed comfortably in the lead.
Ferrand-Prévot, the defending champion, made a solo attack, however, on lap 2 she had a mechanical problem and was overtaken by Lecomte, and could not regain the lost ground on her compatriot.
“Loana passed me. I had a one minute gap (behind Lecomte), so I tried to close the gap, but I think it was impossible,” Ferrand-Prévot said on the mechanical.”
Lecomte acknowledged that mechanicals of this nature are part of mountain biking and nevertheless she was pleased that both she and Ferrand-Prévot stood on the podium in first and second place.
“We had a good start with Pauline, but she had a mechanical problem. When she had this problem, she was a little bit behind me, so I passed her and so this is a race of mountain biking, and every race is different,” Lecomte said.
Lecomte rode a technically smooth race and had no other…
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