world cup round 5 Vallnord
In the Elite category Johannes von Klebelsberg was the first rider of the Ms Mondraker team to come down. Coming from a very strong 26thplace in the qualification he was able to improve his time by one second, which was not enough to repeat the result from the day before. He dropped down to 46thposition.
Mike Jones was struggling all week with some big crashes and a sore wrist, which hold him back. To make it into the race run, Mike decided to use a wrist brace, which might be a handicap, if it was not tested before, but as it turned out later, the wrist brace was not going to be his biggest problem in his final run. Mike started out of the start gate pedaled thru the first section and snapped off his chain and derailleur. While we saw already fast runs without a chain, this one was different. The derailleur kept hanging on the cable and the risk of going fast was too big till the derailleur finally ripped off, which was too late to make up positions in the ranking. Mike finished in 60thposition.
Brook was next to come. With a very strong 4th place from qualification he knew he could make it onto his first world cup podium since Val di Sole 2015. Brook went into a fully commited race run, but lost some time in the first section, while he was faster thru some of the lower section than later winner Loris Vergier. Just in the last corner before the last open bit Brook went hard into a corner, but was able to catch up and crossed the finish line in 3rdposition with 3 more riders to come.
Laurie Greenland was next and again he showed a wild ride. Laurie dangled a little bit in the lower woods, where he almost got send over the bars. Laurie crossed the finish line 1,4 seconds off Brook and still two more riders to come.
Former team-mate of Laurie Danny Hart could catch up with neither Brook nor Laurie and qualification winner Luca Shawn crashed. Brook finished in 3rdplace and Laurie completed this sensational result with a 4thplace.
2 riders on the podium got us into 2ndplace of the ranking for the team of the day and this 2ndplace got us also into 2ndplace of the overall team ranking. We again leave a world cup round with big grins on our faces.
We are now heading back home to prepare for the next world cup round in Mont Saint Anne/ Canada in about 3 weeks. Stay tuned and wait for our team video release on Wednesday!
Day 3: qualification
Another very strong sign of the MS Mondraker in the qualification at the 5thround of the 2018 UCI MTB world cup: Laurie Greenland finished in 3rdposition just 0,006 seconds of 2nd, Brook MacDonald finished in 4thplace with a little mistake in the wood section where he clipped out of his pedal, Mike Jones got 22ndwith a sore wrist after a big crash in the first training and Johannes von Klebelsberg managed to finish in 26thplace. This 26thplace is another strong result, which underlines his ascending performance curve. Brage Vestavik was riding a little bit to conservative and hold back too much. He did not qualify for the race and finished in 85thplace. Last but not least Pat Butler qualified in 8thplace in the junior category.
Overall we showed a very good team performance and we are looking forward to a tight race on Saturday- stay tuned and follow us on redbull.tv
Day 2: first practice
We had a pretty good training day and the MS Mondraker training train was on again. In total it was a good day- a few mechanicals, a few little crashes and one bigger “digger” of Mike Jones, which was a little setback fro him as he tweaked his wrist again, but he will be able to ride today. Brook crashed in his timed training run and still got 10thand co-factory rider Johannes had the 20thfastest time of the day- so we are not worried about our pace or performance- bring on the qualification!
Day 1: track walk
Back to back weekends of racing on another sick track. We are here in Vallnord/ Andorra- a little country between France and Spain in the Pyrenees about 3 hours north of Barcelona and 3 hours south from Toulouse. The track in Vallnord is known as being a very fast track with some ambitious sections and we are coming here with some good memories such as the team overall world cup win in 2016.