Fluckiger Brings the Fire and Fury at Leogang in First XCO World Cup Win of 2022
After some tough results in the first three World Cups, Mathias Fluckiger made a strong case to the BACKness Committee in Austria.
To say the 2022 World Cup mountain bike season hasn’t gone the way Mathias Fluckiger hoped might be a bit of an understatement.
Fluckiger came into the current season after arguably the best campaign of his long career. The then 32-year-old won two XCO races and caputred the World Cup overall. He also finished 2nd at both the Olympics and the World Championships. Not too bad for a standout rider who had the unfortunate distinction of being roughly the same age as Nino Schurter.
The current campaign was a rough go in the first three race weekends for Fluckiger. He finished a disappointing 14th in Petropolis, Brazil, a result he blamed a bit on arriving in the Southern Hemisphere too late. No worries, right? We all make mistakes with our travel plans from time to time.
However, back home in Europe, Fluckiger had another meh ride, finishing 13th at Albstadt. He bounced back a bit at Nove Mesto with a 6th-place finish in the XCO race, and won Swiss Nationals earlier this month, but Schurter didn’t start, so that was kind of an asterisk-y result.
Needless to say, Flucki needed some rejuvenation in the alpine air at Leogang. He really started to hit his stride last summer with wins in both the Short Track and Cross-Country races, and so this fourth weekend of the 2022 UCI XCO World Cup provided the perfect opportunity to, dare we say, demonstrate some BACKness.
Standing in Fluckiger’s way, of course, was Nino Schurter. Schurter has been back on his World Championship game this season, winning at Petropolis and only being bested by those pesky kids Tom Pidcock and Vlad Dascalu at Albstadt and Nove Mesto. When Fluckiger put in a big dig on the Hell Climb—don’t worry, I’m not doing the thing again, I promise—and Schurter followed, it was game on, reminiscent of IDK, the World Championships in Val di Sole last August.
One could argue Fluckiger was seeking payback for Schurter’s epic win at Val di Sole, but the two men have been racing against each other forever and frankly, a win at a World Cup is great but still a little thin compared to the World Championships. No folks, it’s fair to say Fluckiger’s main goal was to prove he is BACK.
And prove it he did. Fluckiger stayed aggressive throughout the race, constantly putting pressure on Schurter. In the final lap, Fluckiger finally broke Schurter on the steep kicker on the long Greenhorn climb. Three bike lengths quickly become three seconds, and that was all Fluckiger would need to hold off his rival. There would be no late heroics from the World Champ, just a win that will propel Fluckiger to BACKness, because XCO life is way more interesting when he is in the mix.
A Rivalry Renewed
Thus far this season, the Elite Men’s races have not necessarily been as feisty as their Elite Women counterparts. Maybe it’s Mathieu van der Poel not racing, maybe it’s riders such as Fluckiger being off their game, but the spiciness has not been as Picante as it could perhaps be.
That dynamic played out again on Sunday in Leogang with a large group of riders massing at the front after the opening prologue lap. Among the group were Vlad Dascalu, Alan Hatherly, Anton Cooper, Henrique Avancini, Jordan Sarrou, Nino Schurter, and Titouan Carod.
After all this talk about Mathias Fluckiger, one would think he was in the mix as well, but nope, he squandered that number one call-up earned from winning the Short Track race on Friday and was 17 seconds back after the 7-minute prologue.
Fortunately, there was a rather hellacious climb at the start of the first lap proper, and Fluckiger put it to good use. He made a massive move before the start of the climb and carried it up to the top of the first climb. In the process, he got back half his deficit to the race leaders.
The race leader in that first lap happened to be Schurter. He led the way up the climb and then railed the ensuing descent, putting pressure on the other riders in that big group. Fluckiger completed his bridge near the end of the lap, and one lap into the six-lap race, the lead group was down to Schurter, Hatherly, Dascalu, Fluckiger, and Cooper.
The second lap was relatively drama-free. Cooper started dangling off the lead group on the first big climb and was popped off by the time the leaders wound their way to the tech/feed zone. Two laps in, the group was four—Schurter, Fluckiger, Hatherly, and Dascalu.
It was Lap 3 where things went from mild to spicy. And they did so in a quick hurry.
On the lower part of the course, Marotte and Cooper bridged up to briefly make it a group of six. Then, throwing it back to his big move in Lap 1, Fluckiger absolutely exploded—in a good way—shortly before the first steep kicker, unleashing an attack of fire and brimstone worthy of an 18th-century Puritan preacher.
Schurter followed, because of course he did, while Dascalu and Hatherly took up the chase after missing out on the fireworks. Fluckiger continued to rail the climb all the way to the top, earning him and Schurter a 9-second gap on Hatherly, who in turn dropped Dascalu.
Schurter is a rider known for his descending skills—see the B Line Challenge from Albstadt—but Fluckiger is also a man with a reputation for throwing caution to the wind going downhill, to varying levels of success. (See: airmailing it off the course at Albstadt in 2017)
In Lap 3 on Sunday, Fluckiger absolutely railed the descent back down after the first climb and got a small gap on Schurter, who looked a bit more tentative on the rooty descents in the alpine woods. Schurter recovered on the long Greenhorn Climb, and then Hatherly bridged across to make it a group of three after three. Marotte and Dascalu sat 16 seconds back and Cooper chased 33.
In Laps 4 and 5, Fluckiger and Schurter combined to put Hatherly in a bizarre no-man’s-land. On the first climb of Lap 4, Fluckiger pushed the pace a bit and Hatherly fell to about 8 seconds back.
And then he stayed there. End of Lap 4: 8 seconds back. End of Lap 5: 7 seconds back. Mid-lap time checks: about 8 seconds back. The South African was close, but he just couldn’t bridge across to again make it a group of three.
When the bell started tolling, however, all eyes were on Schurter and Fluckiger. The two had been inseparable since Lap 3, and now was the chance for Fluckiger to exact some revenge for Val di Sole Worlds and more importantly, duh, make his play for being BACK.
Fluckiger had been the aggressor for most of the race, and he did not let up in the bell lap. There was no bat-out-of-hell attack up the first steep climb, but he did calmly apply pressure to Schurter, earning a small advantage near the top of the first climb. Schurter, however, kept pace and the two were together again midway through the bell lap.
Perhaps with memories of Schurter’s late heroics in Val di Sole still in his mind, Fluckiger made his play to not let things come down to chance on the Greenhorn Climb. After leading the long drag to the far side of the course, he stood up and accelerated on the steep part that turns around toward the final alpine climb.
His brief burst gave him a slim advantage, while Schurter looked rather beleagured. Fluckiger dug deep one more time to keep the pressure on, and a few bike lengths quickly became a few seconds. All he had to do was complete the climb and ride the descent cleanly and the victory was his.
Fluckiger did just that, staying flawless for the last few minutes to capture his first XCO World Cup win of the season, and more importantly, elicit talk of him being BACK.
Is he truly BACK? For one weekend, for sure. But the BACK Watch machine will likely need to gather more evidence at Lenzerheide one month hence before it is able to make a conclusive decision.
Hatherly entered the bell lap with an 18-second advantage on Dascalu, but as soon as he hit the first climb, he started fading pretty hard. Dascalu closed the gap to just 4 seconds at the second tech/feed zone leading into the final climb and descent. All signs pointed to Dascalu scoring another finish on the podium proper, but Hatherly dug deep and was able to hold off the Romanian to capture 3rd.
Dascalu took 4th, and Marotte rounded out the wide-angle podium in 5th. Full results are below.
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