World Cup Dominance
Both Jenny Rissveds and Nino Schurter have won the XC World Cup race in Windham/USA. With Jenny's fifth consecutive U23 World Cup win, we can already celebrate one overall World Cup Win.
Windham, New York. The #huntforglory winning strike finds an unbelievable continuation. N1NO Schurter celebrates his 16th World Cup victory. With one race to go, Jenny Rissveds can already call herself the U23 World Cup Champion.
Great battling in the rockgarden between Manuel Fumic (Nr.6) and N1NO Schurter.
The old school Windham World Cup course is not a favorite to most of the riders- especially not to Nino. But somehow it has always delivered exciting races- and pays out for Nino- both in the past and present. Again it was a very tight battle to the end between Julien Absalon and Nino Schurter. Different this time was that Manuel Fumic, Daniel McConnel and Sergio Mantecon also played a role in the game.
The old school course contained one long climb and one long descent.
As usual N1NO exploded out of the start line like a missile. Leaving no doubt who the man to beat is in this field. After 1.5 laps he had a 5 second lead over his toughest rivals including Absalon. He wasn't sure if he caught a slow leak in the tire, though continued for another lap to find out the hard way that it was actually true. What we saw than was the team work of champions. N1NO still in the lead pulled into the pits to get his real wheel changed by his master mechanic Yanick Gyger. This took no longer than 19 seconds. With a disadvantage of 15 seconds on Julien Absalon, the World Cup leader started his chase down of the leading group in 5th place.
Another moment of glory- N1NO Schurter's 16th World Cup win.
With no sign of giving up N1NO showed class and put in all he had to get back to the leading position he had prior to the flat. Impressively, this only took one lap and soon enough he was back on the wheel of Julien. Unlike many people thought, it was not Julien who than put the pressure on, but Manuel Fumic instead. Manu looked strong up- and downhill. Which played to N1NO's favor, as he only had to follow Fumic as long as Absalon was still behind him. Two laps to go the World Champion himself made this game an end and went to the offensive himself. Manuel Fumic fell back, as well as Daniel McConnell and Sergio Mantecon.
No wonder we saw a super stoked Schurter at the finish:
"Despite the flat tire the race went perfect. The super quick wheel change of my mechanic Yanick Gyger kept me in the game. I felt very strong today at every moment of the race. Now the overall title is only one step away."
With the last two races the Swiss champion twisted the 2015 World Cup game totally to his favor. A race is finished at the finish line- so is the World Cup.
Now let's do some maths:
With Jaroslav Kulhavy (32nd in Windham) out of the overall contention and an advantage of 190 points over Julien Absalon, it now takes N1NO a 22nd place in Val di Sole at the World Cup finals- in case Julien wins. Or a 57th place if Julien becomes 2nd. With no injury, mechanical or other bad luck N1NO is already on the finish line to grab this year`s overall title.
Sergio Mantecon (4th), Julien Absalon (2nd), Nino Schurter (1st), Manuel Fumic (3rd), Daniel McConnell (5th).
World Cup Overall Win for Jenny Rissveds
No reason to wait to call herself a World Cup champion has Jenny Rissveds. With her 5th consecutive World Cup win this season, she secured the overall win with one race to go. The Swedish queen of speed left no doubt from start to finish who's the leading girl in the U23 category. She did a race on her own winning with a record gap of 3:42 minutes to second place Margot Moschetti.
Lonely rider- Jenny Rissveds secured her 5th World Cup Win. No one in the U23 achieved that before.
This well deserved World Cup title sets Jenny's focus to World Championship from this day on: "I have more and more confidence and I get stronger every World Cup race this season. From today on I can fully focus on a great performance at worlds to hopefully set another highlight of this already amazing year."
