#N1NO WINS IN MSA
Mont St. Anne, Canada. 25 years of World Cup racing in Mont St. Anne and the SCOTT-Odlo MTB Racing Team is on the fly from one highlight to another. Thanks to Nino Schurter and Jenny Rissveds- the team secured a double XC world cup victory- our first one in team history. On top of that this tremendous success came at the most classic of all World Cup races. This is #nextlevel!
Nove Mesto 2nd to Kulhavy, Albstadt 2nd to Absalon (after a crash), Lenzerheide 2nd to Kulhavy again (after a flat). Awesome results, but for someone called Nino Schurter second is not good enough. He is used to winning. 4th time is the charm, never giving up and pushing his way to the win. With this win, Nino takes the lead and will be wearing the leader`s jersey from now on, making him even hungrier for more!
Prior to the race anything could be predicted. Would World Cup leader Jaroslav Kulhavy continue his great season? Would the freshly crowned European champion Julien Absalon add another win to his MSA palmares or would Nino finally get his first top step in 2015? Some of this was answered after Jaro had a very slow start and after had to deal with a flat tire. This left last years protagonists Absalon and Schurter as the main favorites. But they were not alone. Mathias Flückiger stayed in the game for the win until he had to change a wheel. And also Florian Vogel was not far back. Half way into the race the pace shifted up a gear, and Flückiger and Vogel had to ride at their own pace.
At the front of the race Absalon and Schurter battled it out. It was obvious Nino tried to make the difference in the tricky descents. But Absalon would not be Absalon if he did not close those gaps easily. So like in 2014 it had to come down to the final lap. And like last year, Nino attacked successfully at the exact same spot. It was just a 3 second gap for about 5 minutes. In the second to the last descent Nino gained another 5 seconds which seemed to break Julien. This paved the road for N1NO 's first world cup victory of this season.
The new leader of the World Cup stated, "It was again a hard fight with Julien. Maybe I wanted this victory a bit more than him. It really means a lot to me to win here in MSA. Especially at the 25th edition. Now I will try hard to defend my leading position in the overall of the World Cup."
It's N1NO's 15th world cup win of his career. With Windham and Val di Sole remaining this month, a 16th or even 17th is not out of reach.
The speed queen of Sweden looked like she was going to take her 4th World Cup win of the season quite easily. With a minute lead with2 laps to go all looked good until she had a flat rear tire. The tech zone was not close by and the advantage turned into a 35 second disadvantage over 2nd place holder in the World Cup- Alexandra Keller.
Jenny Rissveds only had 1 1/2 laps remaining to get this fixed. Staying calm and riding like a "routinier" she managed to find her race rhythm again. With a brilliantly fast last lap she was able to overtake Keller again to ride to the well-deserved win.
The new outfit of the Swiss champion seems to give motivation to Andri Frischknecht. With a super fast start in the U23 race he managed to get ahead of troubles in the technical sections.
After coming out of first lap in 3rd position he dropped back a few places towards the end of the race to finish in a good 6th place. To put this in relation to his U23 results so far it's his second best World Cup result ever. Even though Andri was not on the podium, this result is also very satisfying and underlined our excellent weekend.