The UCI Mountain Bike Marathon World Championships forged a highlight on Snowshoe, West Virginia this weekend, making it the primary time the endurance occasion has been held in North America in its 22-year historical past. Competitions happen on Saturday, September 21.
Defending MTB Marathon ladies’s world champion Mona Mitterwallner (Austria) will match up towards the 2 different riders on final 12 months’s podium, Candice Lill (South Africa) and Adelheid Morath (Germany). Among the many 51 ladies on the beginning listing she’ll additionally must battle 2016 MTB Marathon world champion Jolanda Neff (Switzerland), who’s on a comeback from lacking three months of competitors on account of an ongoing sickness.
From the boys’s 88-rider begin listing, a brand new champion shall be topped as two-time winner Henrique Avancini (Brazil) retired within the rainbow bands. Trying to take the jersey are 2023 podium finishers Martin Stošek (Czechia) and Lukas Baum (Germany) in addition to 2021 world champion Andreas Seewald (Germany) and two-time world champion Héctor Páez León (Colombia).
A sturdy roster for the house group contains reigning US Marathon champions Alexis Skarda and Carson Beckett, in addition to ladies’s runner-up and Marathon World Cup winner Hannah Otto and males’s runner-up Bradyn Lange.
Neff, the cross-country mountain bike Olympic champion from the Tokyo Video games, seems for her sixth MTB world title. She certified for her third Olympic Video games in Paris, however handed on the chance to give attention to respiration remedy in her restoration from ongoing well being points.
After taking off a number of months of racing, she returned to motion in Andorra for the MTB World Championships, ending thirty fifth within the XCO, however moved into kind at a pair of Swiss XCO races, using to fourth place each instances behind high compatriot Sina Frei, who shall be on the beginning line in West Virginia.
With twin citizenship in Argentina and the USA, Sofia Gomez Villafañe will participate within the championships for Argentina, contemporary off her victory at Chequamegon MTB Competition. The win final weekend in Wisconsin gave her a agency lead within the total standings of the Life Time Grand Prix, with two races to go. Earlier this 12 months, Villafañe mentioned she wished to reap the benefits of MTB Marathon Worlds right here within the US, so made it a part of her calendar.
Together with Villafañe, Skarda and Otto are amongst numerous Life Time Grand Prix ladies’s opponents within the subject, which additionally contains Peta Mullens (Australia), Haley Smith (Canada) and Samara Sheppard (Australia).
Among the high males’s contenders who’re additionally competing within the Grand Prix embody Lange, Matthew Beers (South Africa), Zach Calton (USA), Brendan Johnston (Australia), Cole Paton (USA), and Alex Wild (USA).
Snowshoe Mountain has hosted a number of rounds of mountain bike World Cups previously, however it’s a first for a world championship. The course is available in at 104km with 1,988 metres of elevation acquire, with 8.5km of pavement and the vast majority of course on a mixture of dust singletrack and doubletrack. Nevertheless, organisers have famous that 24% of the course is “unknown”, which can be washed-out hearth roads.
The UCI MTB Marathon World Cup season finale at Snowshoe final 12 months, Otto soloed to victory forward of Canadian Smith and Lithuania’s Katazina Sosna. The boys’s race resulted in a muddy three-up dash, gained by Germany’s Simon Stiebjahn.
