Valentina Holl produces stunning ride to take home victory ahead of Camille Balanche and Rachel Atherton

UCI Mountain Bike Downhill world champion Valentina Holl (Rockshox Trek Race Team) produced a stunning ride to take the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Downhill title in front her home fans in Austria with a time of 3:23.222.

Holl was the final rider to come out of the gate and put down a fearless ride that sparked joyous scenes in the finish area as she celebrated with fans, friends, family and her coaching staff.

Italy’s Veronika Widmann (Continental Nukeproof Factory Racing) went out first and set the opening benchmark of 3:41.549 but she was immediately usurped by the second rider out of the gate Jess Blewitt (GT-Continental Factory Racing) of New Zealand who went five seconds quicker with a time of 3:36.303.

The time was then broken twice in succession by two rivals from their days racing in the juniors as first Canada’s Gracey Hemstreet (Norco Factory Team) and then Phoebe Gale (Canyon CLLCTV FMD) of Great Britain set new fastest times despite the latter having a slight error in the woods as she briefly was in the wrong gear.

Due to that error, Gale’s lead was just under a second but it was still the first time in her elite career that she had gone into the leader’s chair.

But she didn’t have long in the chair as last week’s winner Atherton put down a blistering time of 3:30.556 which could have been even quicker had she not lost a bit of time on the jumps before the woods.

“Wow!” exclaimed Cedric Gracia watching on commentary as Atherton’s time splits came in.

“It cost her a lot of time coming into the corner,” he added as he watched the replay of her slightly missed jump, explaining how easy it is to lose time in what seems like quite a small moment.

The rider after Atherton was Slovakia’s Monika Hrastnik (Dorval AM Commencal) who had an interesting ride, at one point being as much as 3.343 behind Atherton. However she found an incredible amount of time in the final sector and ended up second just 0.269 behind.

Then came the final three riders and the first was Balanche who blew past Atherton’s time finishing 3.031 ahead of her rival.

“Unbelievable, everything was done in the last corners!” Gracia said. “What a finish, the last part of the woods section and the last two corners she did it so good.”

Next up was German champion Nina Hoffman but unfortunately despite being in the green after the third sector she was caught out by a tricky right-hander in the woods that had earlier broken a bike in the semi-finals. She was able to get up and finish her run but she was way out of contention after that crash.

The final rider out of the gate was Holl, who was seeking an elusive win in front of her home crowd and the 21-year-old more than delivered with a fantastic time of 3:23.222.

“The further down she goes the faster she goes” screamed a delighted Gracia who couldn’t believe what he was watching.

“She’s done it! What a run! This is Mountain Biking!”

A delighted Holl said: “Leogang is such a difficult race for me, last year was such a disaster I’ve never been so down with myself. The years before first injury and then a crash in the last corner, every time I’m so close and it didn’t work and after last time I was like lost I didn’t know what to do and it all just clicked this week.

“All my friends here, everyone I love is here and I’m so stoked they are with me.

Asked about the scenes at the finish, Holl said: “Definitely [on winning in front of home fans] I mean everyone is here I also have massive expectations for myself and to do it here finally it feels so good.

“I think my bike was just going so much faster because in the first three corners I thought ‘oh my God it feels different’ but my mechanic did a really good job, to make it a lot firmer and it went a lot faster and helped me keep up my speed all the way down to the finish.”

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