UCI MTB World Cup (All forms!)

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Fem van Empel finished 17th, which is actually quite good, and better than expected. Ahead of Line Burquier, for example. She had a good start, a poor first few laps, and then she got the engine going.

Yeah, that's not bad at all - Burquier dominated the U23 last season, so beating her is good; she got nowhere near her in the World Cups she did last year. I wonder if she got sucked into trying to stay with the leaders, and blew up.
Plenty of improvement to come, (she missed some races with illness) and will now likely qualify for the next Short Track....

Burquier, like Mitterwallner makes awful starts and is playing catch up - in the Elites, it's hard to do.
 
Yeah, that's not bad at all - Burquier dominated the U23 last season, so beating her is good; she got nowhere near her in the World Cups she did last year. I wonder if she got sucked into trying to stay with the leaders, and blew up.
Plenty of improvement to come, (she missed some races with illness) and will now likely qualify for the next Short Track....

Burquier, like Mitterwallner makes awful starts and is playing catch up - in the Elites, it's hard to do.
To be fair I don't think Line Burquier is in a great shape either, and hasn't been for a long while. Her cyclocross season was a dud, and look how far ahead Puck is now compared to last year. Van Empel has been a bit of an enigma so far this spring, hardly done any racing, and apparently been sick/injured, so there's definitely room to improve.
 
Yes, I thought she'd go well, but probably not winning the first time out against a stacked field. It took her team mate rather longer to finally get that first win; but both attacked at the same place to win at Nove Mesto.

Saying that, Evie looks super strong, and her descending is fabulous to watch; I hope she'll have a great season.
 
Having caught up on the racing, it’s another CX rider - Joshua Dubau - that really impressed me…he has such an easy, relaxed style on the bike, it almost looked like he forgot to try and win the race! He seemed better than Pidcock on the technical uphills, but put under pressure on the descents. Will be an interesting one to watch this year
 
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Having caught up on the racing, it’s another CX rider - Joshua Dubau - that really impressed me…he has such an easy, relaxed style on the bike, it almost looked like he forgot to try and win the race! He seemed better than Pidcock on the technical uphills, but put under pressure on the descents. Will be an interesting one to watch this year
Maybe my short-term memory is failing me, but I think he was struggling on the uphills and making up ground on Pidcock on the descents until the latter crashed.
 
Maybe my short-term memory is failing me, but I think he was struggling on the uphills and making up ground on Pidcock on the descents until the latter crashed.
Age catches up with us all my friend but I was surprised to see Joshua Dubau a match for Pidcock on the long uphill drags and better on the rooty and rocky uphill tech because Pidcock ran too much psi in his tyres (by choice). Apparently, Pidders had punctures on such terrain in the past and didnt want to run the risk of flatting. Testament to Pidcocks bike skills negotiating slippy rock gardens on that setup.
 
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Can Dubau repeat that performance - and be this season's Braidot, or was it a one off? He was 2nd in the French Cup race behind Gaze so seems in good form.
Since he is a CX racer I hope he continues to do well in XCO. To me, it seems like a CX and MTB race schedule would be an ideal race calendar. You can have a nice break late winter/early spring and another nice break in late summer/early fall. It's when you try to add in too many road races, like Pidcock and MvdP, that things get complicated.