French national champion Titouan Carod (BMC MTB) won the first elite XCO Mountain Bike World Cup of his career on Sunday at Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada, with a completely dominant performance on the course he called his ‘favourite’.
In a five-way battle for the remaining podium spots, Carod’s team mate Filippo Colombo outsprinted David Valero (BH Templo Cafes UCC) for second. Nino Schurter (Scott-SRAM), despite finishing just off the podium in sixth, holds onto the overall leader’s jersey with one race to go.
Mont-Sainte-Anne has been part of the World Cup circuit since it began in 1991, as well as hosting three world championships. It is considered a monument of the sport, one of the only remaining classic natural courses, with roots, rocks, steep climbs and technical descents. While the men missed the torrential rain that swept through for 30 minutes in the middle of the women’s race, much of the course remained wet, making descents especially treacherous.
World champion Schurter would normally be counted among the prohibitive favourites, however, a poor XCC race on Friday put him back on the fourth row of the starting grid. This, coupled with him still recovering from a bad crash at the previous round a week earlier in the XCC that kept him out of the XCO, opened the door for other riders to charge in the early stages.
The rider who did that was Carod, who went to the front on the second of two short start loops and never looked back. By the start of the first full lap of six, the French rider had a small gap, and he attacked the main climb – La Marmotte – on that first lap aggressively, while others hesitated. He was assisted by his teammate Colombo, who sat at the front of the bunch behind, effectively controlling the chase. By the top of the climb Carod was 11 seconds ahead, and his lead just kept growing, eventually reaching over two minutes by the start of the last lap,…
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