Why Did They Crash?! | Story Of The Race – Andorra

With thunderstorms changing the schedule the downhill world cup was condensed into a wild and intense spectacle with crazy fast runs, surprising results and a few wild moments which are broken down in this video. Tune in to learn more.

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What’s that? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Oh, no. It’s a It’s breakfast. Round six of the downhill world cup is done and dampened after the forecast thunderstorm rolled through the venue right on quue. The organizers had to make a tough call after they got the forecast as nobody wants racing to be decided by the weather or see an injured rider not get treated quick enough because the heli can’t fly. Credit where it’s due to the organizers, the schedule was perfectly shifted. So, the racing finished just before the heavens opened on both qualifying and race day. It did mean that unfortunately the junior race was cancelled to allow for that change and the qualifying results from the previous day became the final results. You all right? This can seem unfair, but with the current nonprotected qualifying system, all of the racers are going flat out in qualifying. So, at least we don’t get a case of a top ranked racer cruising the qual and using their protected status to get in the final, which is then cancelled, giving them a terrible race result. Cancelling was crap, but necessary and fair. So, who won out in this fairly necessary quali race? Well, Rosa Z kept the podium streak going with a solid third place, which maintains her solid 55point lead in the series. If she keeps this consistency going, it’ll be almost impossible to catch her with four races left to go. Rosa Jensen has had a wild ride this year with a win at the opening round, an injury at the second round, not qualifying at the third round, missing the fourth round due to exams, not qualifying at the fifth round, and then jumping back onto the podium with second at this round. It seems she’s found her speed again and will be on more podiums this year. We talk about Rosa Z being the consistent one, but Altha Oscar is challenging her for that title. Two wins on the trot now after a couple of seconds in a row is super impressive. If it wasn’t for her disqualification in Ludenville, the series battle would be a lot tighter. Great riding from the American and she’s looking comfortable in second place in the overall. The junior men’s quali race was an exciting one with them putting down the fastest times of the entire qualifying day, including the elites, which is just wild to think about. Tyler Wait was one of the silly fast boys who scored a top time on the loose endurance slopes. Another bronze medal in the bag and he also sneaks into second place in the overall after series leader Till Alan made a few mistakes on his run and finished in fifth. Asa Vermet was very close to winning his first gold medal of the year. He’s been trending upwards all season with a 10th, fifth, 3rd, 3rd, second and another second place finish at this round. Only one more place to go and it feels like it’s coming soon. It will depend on the Alan twins though who seem to be trading the top step back and forwards between them along with that leader jersey. Today it was Max’s turn as he absolutely melted the tires off his bike in that top sector to make a time buffer that he rode all the way to the finish for another gold medal finish. His brother Till handed over the leader jersey to Max, but I bet this isn’t the last time they’re going to trade that green top between them. Millie Yonet was on an absolute heater this weekend in Elite Women. It seems like her second place in Q2 last weekend really gave her the confidence in her abilities aboard that new bike and she started riding with proper intention. The chat behind the scenes was that she really thought she could win this weekend and boy did she give it a go. Flatout top section with some two wheel drifts and great commitment, but unfortunately she pushed the front just before the long traverse which lost her a good chunk of time. She did bring a lot of it back though despite some fatigue induced looseness on the way to her first podium since Leger last year. Third place for Millie and now eyes are on for her winning the 100,000 euro belted purse. Maybe at a race where she podium last year at the next round. Maybe. Maybe. Second place went to the fastest rider to not yet win a gold medal this year. Valley Hole has amassed four silver medals this season which have gone a long way to securing her good lead in the overall. She’s clearly not too stoked about not winning yet, which is an interesting vibe from the current series leader. She’s absolutely got the skills to win and we can see it in the split times, but there’s something missing at the moment. With over a month until the next race, I’m interested to see if Valley the Destroyer makes a return in Leger. I had Tanny down for the win this weekend. Unfortunately, it seems like I didn’t click save on my pink bike fantasy team, which meant I got absolutely decimated this week. Luckily, I get to make these claims on international platforms such as this, and uh gives my ego a little tickle. Tanny didn’t tickle the track here in Andura. She carved it into submission and rode a super strong and consistent lap with no obvious weaknesses as far as I could see. She closed this block of racing just like she started in Poland with a second in qualifying and a first place in the race. But another rider was going faster and we’ll get to that. First, let’s tackle the elite men’s podium, which was a delightful French sandwich with a Canadian filling made in a door, of course, which I guess would be some kind of maple back bacon baguette with no tax to pay. The bottom baguette boy would be Loris Verier, who looked like the danger man all week with his fast but light touch on this tricky trail. His top splits were really good, but not great. But the final two sectors were where things got tech and steeper, and oh, he was exceptional. Every other rider that tried to match him just could not do it in those lower slopes until Jackson Goldston put together a precise and powerful run with welltimed hops, pumps, and creative lines that saw him build speed the whole way down the track. His huck over the two drops after the rock garden was sick. The inside into the quad was crazy precise, and the composure through the final woods was a stark contrast to the many other loose rides through there. The run was enough to slot Jackson into the lead and his time would hold until the marketing team at Warner Brothers Discovery’s dream scenario came into focus. Super Brun came out the gate like a man possessing Kryptonian power and a nice little advertising bonus contract based on his final result. And he carved those top turns with such composure and hell inside lines that I’d love to compare if we had a consistent camera angle instead of a wideangle lens and a blimp 5 miles away. But it was this top section where Brunie won the race by taking over a second out of Jackson. Honestly, I feel like a big part was his line that he held super low around the big left into the shark fin and allowed him to climb up on the exit and float that shark fin gap. But we’ll never know, but it looked good. The rest of the track was classic smooth FM Brun style, fast, precise, and really composed on his way to his second win of the season and hopefully the beginning of a good battle with Jackson through the rest of the year. Now this story and there are many. We could talk about Juan for his unreal first place qualifier then slightly under committing to right-hand bar in his race which set him up too tight for an unsupported left over crest causing him to wash out and get a dirty bum. It could be about Amry Pieron’s bizarre offtrack excursion while on pace for a podium despite his titanium shoulder not even reaching body temperature. But no, I’d like to have a little chat about the final woods. Two riders were on for possible wins before crashing in this section. So, what makes it so difficult? The simple answer is that riders are tired at the end of a run. And it’s the most technical piece of track to string together. It’s really hard to actually conceptualize this when you see a good rider just skimming through it without an issue. But let me try and break it down with three main tech features and what makes them so hard. Number one, the entrance to the left has a theoretical ideal line that allows the rider to set up super wide next to the tree. The wider they can set up, the less they have to turn. And in theory, the faster they can then go through the turn. To go onto that line, they have to thread the needle between big solid chunky rocks and wiggle past a big route while also preloading their bike to gap from this danger zone to land 3 m away with their wheels pretty much touching the tree on the right. And also already leading in for the following turn. Get your balance a little wrong, catch a wheel on something you didn’t expect, or even fail to jump far enough and you can get bucked offline or out of rhythm and start plowing into the ups slopes of the next technical features. This is what happened to Davidid Palazari. Well, he was on for his first ever podium finish in a World Cup downhill finals. He did extremely well to ride out of it like he did, but he was gutted that he didn’t keep it on track. Bottom woods have been my my worst split all weekend. Yeah. So, even this morning, I wanted to practice, but I messed up twice. So I just kept one bullet basically because I knew I also studied my teammates which were really fast at it. Yeah. And I I knew I had one chance. So I committed for race run to come in like proper fast. Yeah. And uh actually I discovered from your video because I really didn’t understood what happened in my run when I went to set up right. I just slightly touch uh a root with the right side of the tire. And that moved my front wheel like a few cm left. So instead of going around the rock, I ended up on top of it. And that made me jump into the corner and like I was way too fast to jump into the corner. I wasn’t supposed to. So I just uh like fully compressed, lost the balance, ended up wide. I tried to avoid the tree and tried to save it some save it somehow. Didn’t work. I’m lucky I didn’t get a big crash at least. Number two, the straight that Didvid got loose down has several big steps, holes, and rocks that are spaced in a way that riders can’t get through without hitting at least some of them at high speed. The fact that they hit them after jumping out of a corner means that it’s so easy to plow into one of the heaviest hits on the track with their balance just not quite right. If they are strong, they can sometimes handle it, but it’s a challenge even for the best riders in the world. Number three, finally, if they manage to negotiate the super precise entrance, take the massive hits without getting too unsettled, they then have the simple task of committing to the right turn that sends riders out into the open. It’s not that hard when you hit it in the center where there’s grip, but there is no Burma rut here and the dirt turns to powder the wider you go. Oh, and you remember the big hits in the last section? There’s also a turn and another hit in there which can very easily send you wide and force you to turn on the off camera powder. Some riders get away with it, but others do not. Gracie Hemstre falls into the latter camp as she was 2 seconds up, forced wide, tried to commit to the turn, drifted, caught grip, and then got spat into an unintentional yaw that ended up with her hitting the deck. Despite that, she still finished in fifth place, which is mega impressive. I hope that that helps to clear up why that section caused so many issues and gives a bit more context to the visual delight that is downhill racing. This is my last planned World Cup video that will be shot on location. It’s been a crazy few years of traveling the world, taking in everything that happens and then attempting to distill it into some kind of informative just yet entertaining package for you fine folks. And it’s not stopping here. I’m still going to make most of the same videos for Pink Bike. I’m just doing it from the UK so I can be at home with my family. Many thanks for all the love and I will still see you in the next video.