France Vs Canada | Inside The Tape – Mont Sainte Anne

It was a biblical start in Mont Sainte Anne, Canada, with rain so heavy that parts of the track washed away. Luckily, the weather improved, and Charlie got himself trackside to see how things were shaping up for the final round of the 2025 Downhill Mountain Bike Series. Lines, rider chat, crashes and we even managed to capture a ghosted comparison of the title contenders.

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Welcome everyone. It’s the final round of the 2025 World Cup Series in Mons an exciting one. There’s some really tight championship battles that are going on and this track is uh usually pretty similar, but we’ve got our man on site, Charlie Kokiard. He’s on the hill. He’s at the top of the big mountain. Charlie, how are you getting on? Yes, Ben, the excitement is palpable here in Monsson. And unlike last week in Lake Placid, it is very cold. I have put my best Canadian outfit for you despite the weather, Charlie. Only you would wear that outfit, but I’m loving those guns. You know, get them on show. So, h dive down into the track. I’ve heard it’s been wet, so show us how it’s changing and show us what the challenges are going to be this weekend. The weather is actually looking quite nice for the rest of the week here. It should stay sunny until Final Day. However, the day before track wall, it was torrential. It rained all evening, all night, and they even had to postpone track walk because it was too wet. I assume it’s probably going to rot out at some point. So, it might not be as straightforward as the riders that have been here many times before might think. That sounds a little bit spicy, Charlie. So, yeah, I’m excited. It’s going to make the racing a little bit more unpredictable. Let’s see the rest. The first section is a succession of man-made BMS and flat straits lined with rocks. It was wet from the nights prior, and ruts appeared immediately, taking people out. They also didn’t dry out all day because of the cold weather. Despite being a seemingly unimportant section, picking the right rut and coming out of those corners clean and with good speed will be key to not losing time in that top section. follows a first section of fast flat motorway punctuated with a few jumps before we get into the thick of things. I assume it will benefit riders who will have the power and fitness to fit a few pedal strokes in. So behind me is the section where the riders get into the wood after this very fast bit. It is characterized by this very traditional big North American rocks which can break wheels, cause punctures and crashes overall. I think at full speed this might be a decider because you can very easily pick up a flat or mechanical in one of the sections. Oh Canada, our home and native land. True pat love in all. It was it was icy this morning. the top half all in those woods was super slippery and now they’re drying out a bit and getting some ruts and packing in. So, um yeah, we’ve had a bit of shade come on the the Savo. It’s cold, but uh the shade allows you to see every little bump, everything. And now you can just absolutely charge. So, it’s quite fast. It’s quite gnarly. Uh probably one of the fastest we’ve seen now, I think. And times are going to be uh insane. So, yeah, just got to keep charging and try and be on the right line. Yeah, it’s like one of the kind of the steepest section and we have a few different choice line. So, it’s with a flat exit at the end. So, it’s really important key section on this wood to make sure that you keep speed on the left corner before the flat. Everyone seems to favor the same entrance going in wide. However, you can then either go full gas on the outside, which is longer but more straightforward, or you can break early, go inside the tree, then gap into the left-hander. This is a tricky maneuver, as if you misjudge your hop, you can hit the rocks below, which will slow you down and potentially make you go over the bars. After a few pedal strokes, it’s time to thread the needle. Yeah, there’s quite a lot of options. Like even on the entry, the boys are kind of coming up with a new straighter line. Um, and it’s I guess it’s just whatever they’re most comfortable with. But yeah, you can really kind of straighten the whole section up or there’s options to do hit all the corners or just straighten the second section up. So, it’s all just really everyone’s looking at the exit speed coming out and optimizing that because the next section is quite flat and so you’ll then carry that down like the rest of the piece. So, Charlie, I remember like that that track is one of the fastest tracks in the world, but it’s also got two of the tightest, most awkward corners ever. Are they still there? So, I am just out of this first wood section. And what we’ve noticed is that there’s quite a few lines in this wood. However, if you get the lines wrong, the exits is quite often flat, which means your line choice is important, but what is most important is your exit speed. Because after most of those corners, there’s very long flat sections that if you’re losing speed, you will be losing a lot of time. Charlie, that’s looking really good, but we need to go something. And we’ve done the rock garden every year. Can you find something better? Yeah, Ben. Sorry, I got to cover myself here because it is getting really cold in Monadan and windy. It’s been windy all day, probably more than what we were expecting. I wonder if that’s going to be a decider in the actual race on Saturday. Going back to the ghost section, we’ll do something slightly different than what we’ve done in the past. Uh we’re going to be ghosting the Sim Smith drop. Nice. Yeah, that’s a super fast bet. That should look sick. Yeah, let’s do it. Riders come into this so fast that it is easy to get out of shape, but there is a corner that saves you until it doesn’t. The corner is starting to fall apart, which it has done in the past. And right there, the support disappears, which means you could end up in the netting if you come in too loose. If you get it decent though, you get to progress on to this Stevie Smith drop that has a few edges that can kick you funny. But if you roll it like that, Rosa rolled down the rock face and dropped off onto the wood. Not a problem. But as you go faster, it’s impossible to keep the wheels on the rock as Ollie here just does a nose tap at the end and lands in the wood. Now, jumping all the way down is actually the fastest way to do it. But if you get kicked funny and you land a little bit out of shape, it can make it hard to slow down for the corner, which isn’t a problem if you’re going around the BM. But there’s an inside line here and it is shorter and it looks good. But there’s actually a problem with it. If you look closely, there’s a rut developing and as that rut gets deeper, it could make the inside line harder. At the moment though, it looks to be holding riders well and is actually a good thing to aim for if you are gapping the entire rock to the wood. Immediately after the corner is a rough rock slab that rattles the bones before a big compression. This compression is in a corner and it’s a very important corner because after this turn you don’t touch your brakes for about 300 m. You have to get it perfect. You have to get it fast. So let’s see who does it the best. We had to include Finn Isles. He went really fast in time training. He’s also a local boy. He’s won here before. He is on a pretty standard line. Looking good. Few little scrubs for the boys. Then we got Dylan Maples. And we had to use him because his second name is Maples. And he is also riding really good. Little mini Amory. And he did a sneaky little inside there, which looked nice. So, let’s compare the two into the section off the drop. They both gap all the way down around the corner. This is going to be one of the closest ghosts you ever see cuz they take the exact same line. Look at them. They’re neck and leg. I can’t even tell you who’s in front. Maybe. No. Is it? I don’t know. They both get that compression perfect as Finn kind of hovers in the air as Darkfish glitches out, but he’s back now. They are neck and neck coming down into this split. Dylan goes to the inside. Finn goes outside and scrubs. Will there be a difference? It’s still super close. And then at the lip of this jump, which is our finish, it’s only 01 to Dylan. So maybe that inside’s a little bit faster. And look, it’s Finn’s teammate and series contender Lloyd Briny, who takes that inside in the rock. Hits it really nice. Holy smokes, that’s looking good. Excited to see how this race goes at the weekend. Now, here they go off the drop. And you can see Brunie is actually going off the drop faster, which is insane considering he’s going for this inside. He hooks into that rut, gets it nice as Dylan rails around that outside line. Look how far in front is already. That inside was so fast. He’s motoring down into the corner. Watch those Bruny legs take that compression and carry the speed out. Dylan definitely weighs a little bit less than Bruny, so I doubt he’s going to carry extra momentum down this next bit. Both of them are on that inside. It looks like it kicks you less going into that next section. I assume that’s going to be better. And at the finish line, how much is it going to be? Oh, it’s a big one. 27 to Brun. Jackson Goldston jumps cleanly to the bottom. I would be silly not to compare this man given the title fight going on. Super clean round there. It’s just carrying a lot of speed. The boy goes good here. So, let’s compare. They both come in and look at this. Jackson immediately starts to pull a bit of a gap. He went off of that drop so fast and so smooth. Britney goes to that inside line. We know it’s shorter, but look at this speed. Jackson carries around that outside line. It looks like they’re neck and neck, which you wouldn’t think was possible down into the compression. Jackson is pulling ahead slightly. He’s very clean and holds a really upright body position through that compression. His power to weight ratio is insane. And look, he’s managed to get set up further left for this light crest on the inside. Super smooth. And then for this last little bit, what’s it going to be? I think Jackson’s going to take it. 08 to Jackson. And honestly, it was the speed off of that Stevie Smith drop and around that first corner. Following the fast motorway section, riders get into the famously dreaded MSA Rock Garden. The entry itself is sketchy and very rough, making it hard to set up properly for the first section. Once they’ve reached the first slab, they have different options. They can either roll onto the outside and turn on the slab, the solution favored by most, as it is the most straightforward. They can also take on the Jackson approach by prehopping onto the inside, allowing you to avoid some of those rocks and carry more speed. Brunie came through with another option, which is prehopping onto the outside of that section and opening a wider line for the second part. This seems to be the highest risk but fastest option. Or they can adopt the classic fin strategy, which is to barge in with a throttle wide open and hit an immovable object. It’s pretty sick. Yeah, just hard to make it out in one piece if you’re up in pace. But it’s just about to find the right speed in between what’s too much and what’s too slow. Like soon as you’re trying too hard, it’s it’s so easy to up. At the exit of the rock garden, most riders would go around the main rock to dive into the down slope. But some, like Jackson or Danny, found a way to skip it altogether and gap into it, avoiding a slide out and carrying more speed into the next flat section. We then get to the very last section of the track, starting with a tricky flat rock garden with different possible hops and prejumps. The exit of the woods is very unexciting, but will be key during the race. This flat, grassy corner, which you have to pedal out of, may very well be the race decider if a rider negotiates it poorly or has no gas left to pedal. The end is well known from mountain bike fans around the world with a questionable table jump followed by two rock gardens and a sharp turn into the last finish line jumps. That was sensational, Charlie. This track always delivers. And good shout in the ghost. That bit worked real nice. So, do you want to wrap it up? What was your feelings in the day? Even though the track is very old and has been run so many times, it is still one of the best track of the year. So many rocks is so tricky. It goes fast, it goes slow. You got to get your braking right. I think the race may be decided in those slow flat sectioned exits after those rough bits. I hope it’s not going to end that way, but there is a very good chance one of the top riders will get a flat mechanical. Yeah, let’s hope the bikes get to the bottom in one piece and we get some good fair racing because there’s a championship to decide here. And we will see this weekend if the French or the Canadian goes home with the overall title. But because we’re in Canada, I am going to celebrate early and open a can of the local beverage. So stay tuned for our story of the race video. Watch the race if you can and we will see you very