Braidot Capitalizes Again at World Cup Vallnord to Complete July to Remember
Valero and Dascalu bring the heat, while Braidot stays cool at the Andorra summer scorcher
For the readers who have been following our write-ups of the XCO Mountain Bike World Cup series this summer, it’s fair to say your humble correspondent totally let you down by not finding time to write about the Elite Men’s race at Lenzerheide last weekend. The race had drama of the highest order and a surprise finish few observers likely saw coming.
Nino Schurter was going for what would be a record-setting 34th World Cup win on his home course located a mere hour from where he was born, while his long-time Swiss rival Mathias Fluckiger was doing everything he could to deny the World Champ his special day. The two battled for position deep into the last lap until a Swiss-on-Swiss collision away from the eyes of the broadcast cameras took the two out of contention and allowed Italian Luca Braidot to take home a surprising win.
Schurter was devastated, as his dream of breaking the record he shares with Julian Absalon on his home course went crashing to the Swiss soil.
Fortunately for Schurter, the current World Cup block features two races, and the competitors were back at it in the tiny nation of Andorra tucked into the Pyrennes between Spain and France. With Tom Pidcock, IDK, away winning on the Alpe du Huez, Sunday’s race was good as any opportunity for the nine-time world champion to get his record-setting win.
Schurter’s pre-race lot was improved a bit more when Fluckiger withdrew prior to the start of the race due to illness, but Schurter was unable to take advantage of the opportunity, finding himself in a deep hole from the race start on the hot, dusty afternoon in Vallnord.
After a Lap 1 heat check flier by old friend Victor Koretzky—who denied Schurter a record-tying win last year at Albstadt—a lead selection of Koretzky, Braidot, Vlad Dascalu, David Valero, and Jorand Sarrou sorted itself out at the midway point of the race. Schurter was not out of the game, sitting about 15 seconds back, but he was still not in that lead group. At least not yet.
Last weekend in Lenzerheide, Braidot showed tactical savvy by being in the right position when the aforementioned Swiss v. Swiss incident occurred. On Sunday, the story was again about Braidot’s ability to play the tactics right, this time by reaping the fruits of other riders’ labor.
First, a massive Lap 4 effort from Valero dropped Sarrou and Koretzky, whittling the lead group to three. Then with Schurter mere seconds from bridging to the lead group, Dascalu went to the front and put in a big attack that essentially ended Schurter’s dream of a comeback win.
Dascalu kept his move going on the first climb of the final lap, but with the heat, dust, and sun, he imploded near the top of the climb. The beneficiary was a perfectly positioned Braidot. The Italian pulled around and put in a big attack of his own on the “wall” climb. It was an attack Valero could not keep pace with, and victory again belonged to Braidot.
Hello Old Friend
After a successful 2021 campaign racing mountain bikes, Frenchman Victor Koretzky decided to take more of a road focus this season. In addition to racing a number of French stage races, he also raced at Spring Classics such as the Tour of Flanders, Amstel Gold, and Dwars Door Vlaanderen.
Koretzky hasn’t been totally absent from the XCO World Cup scene—he participated at Albstadt and Nove Mesto—but his results were a far cry from Albstadt 2021 when he outdueled Nino Schurter in the last lap to take home a World Cup win.
Despite the punishingly hot temperatures—high temps in Andorra were pushing 100-degrees throughout the weekend—or maybe because of them, because heat check, Koretzky was determined to make his mark on Sunday’s race. Koretzky went out like a rocket and dropped Thomas Litscher on the second climb in a total heat check move. He rocketed out to a 10-second advantage on Litscher, Jordan Sarrou, Vlad Dascalu, Luca Braidot, and Juri Zanotti.
Noticeably missing from the early move were the two Swiss men involved in last week’s dramarama, Mathias Fluckiger and Nino Schurter. Fluckiger withdrew from Sunday’s XCO race shortly before the start after winning the Short Track race on Friday. Schurter just had a bad start and appeared to be succombing to the heat. He was in 11th after the first lap.
One lap into the six-lap race, Koretzky led Sarrou and Dascalu by 9 seconds. Braidot was in solo 4th, 13 seconds back.
Koretzky’s heat check would only last so long. Near the top of the first climb in the woods, Sarrou and Dascalu bridged up to make it a lead group of three, with Braidot only a few seconds behind them. At the end of Lap 2, Braidot chased 3 seconds and David Valero 13.
We’ve talked a lot about home-field advantage in XCO Mountain Biking, and as the race entered its middle stage, it appeared the dynamic would again play a role. Well, sort of. Spain is not hosting a World Cup this season and Andorra is not Spain AND David Valero’s hometown of Baza is a 10-hour drive from Vallnord, but whatever, let’s roll with it.
The Tokyo bronze medalist, appropriately, really started to make his move forward in the third lap (because threes? IDK). He closed his chasing gap down to 7 seconds at the first time split and then finally made contact mid lap. Titouan Carod also surged forward in Lap 3 to make it a lead group of six midway into the race.
It was in Lap 4 that things started to happen. Mostly because of Valero.
Not content to just participate at the front, the tall Spaniard went to the front on the first of the lap’s two big climbs and started to drive a solid pace. Carod was the first to fall off, and the lead group was soon down to five.
Next to go was Sarrou, who could not keep up when Valero continued to drill it up the long “wall” climb. Then, after cresting the top of that challenging incline, Koretzky tapped out of the lead group on the way back down to the start/finish.
The damage Valero did was impressive. The leaders were down to him, Dascalu and Braidot. Sarrou and Koretzky were 13 seconds back, and Schurter and Sam Gaze were another 10 seconds behind them. A podium seemed possible for Schurter, maybe, but the front of the race sure seemed a pipe dream with two lap to go.
Riding the Wave
The course at Vallnord was challenging enough with the dust, technical descents, and relentless climbs, but throw in the extreme heat and it was a unique challenge that caused many a big attack to blow up quickly. Valero didn’t blow up, but his hard-charging pace definitely started to slow in Lap 5.
The biggest beneficiary of the slowing pace was Schurter. The World Champ passed Sarrou and Koretzky on the first climb and then started to narrow in on the lead trio. Following the descent back down away from the wall, it looked like Schurter was going to make contact with the leaders.
Dascalu, who has battled with Schurter throughout the season, had other plans. At a series of flat rollers, with Schurter literally one roller away from making contact, Dascalu passed Valero and went on the attack. It was a textbook move of savvy beyond Dascalu’s 24 years of age, and it spelled the end of Schurter’s quest for a near-miraculous comeback win.
Dascalu quickly dropped Valero, while Braidot stuck his wheel. Dascalu stayed on the move for the rest of the penultimate lap. Braidot did his best to keep the flying Romanian in sight, dangling a few bike lengths back. Entering the bell lap, Dascalu led, Braidot chased 4 seconds, Valero 8, and Schurter was 20 seconds behind.
Dascalu has never won a World Cup, Romania has never won a World Cup, and at the start of the bell lap, Vlad made his play to amend those histories. He absolutely went for it on the climb that follows the dual slalom descent section. When Braidot and Valero hopped down to the bottom of the slalom, Dascalu was a small figure well up the climb.
It appeared the Romanian had played it perfectly. But it was also surface-of-the-sun hot, and the day’s races showed it was hard to maintain long maximal efforts in the hot, dusty conditions. There was still a lot of racing left to go.
That last bit about the heat should have come with a spoiler alert, probably, because mere moments later, Dascalu absolutely imploded. Braidot and Valero were chasing a good 10+ seconds on the exposed part of the lap’s first climb, but when they passed into the woods near the top, the two chasers had caught and then passed Dascalu. For the second straight week, it appeared Braidot had ridden the wave of others’ attacks and put himself in a position to capitalize when bad things happen to his competitors.
Once Braidot made contact with Dascalu, he rode right through him and quickly established a gap of his own. Valero also passed Dascalu, making him the only rider with a hope of denying Braidot his mid-July to remember.
Braidot took a cue from Dascalu’s Lap 5 move and unleashed an attack on the wall climb that denied Valero any hope of getting back to the front of the race. From there Braidot kept things upright and clean—albeit a bit dusty—to take him his second World Cup win in as many weeks.
Valero turned in a strong 2nd, and Schurter found some legs in the last lap to capture 3rd. Dascalu finished a full 38 seconds back in 4th, and Sarrou wheelied his way across the line in 5th.
Koretzky came away with a 12th-place finish after his heat check start. Full results are below. Next up on the World Cup calendar is the North American block of racing, with Snowshoe up first the weekend of July 29-31.
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