Rumors of Nino Schurter's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Folks, at this point, do we even need to say it?
After watching the Elite Men’s XCO race on Saturday, I tried to think of something profound to text to Bill. All I could come up with was, “Wowowowowowowowow.” I then logged into Twitter to find out that was Bill’s exact reaction as well. This is all to say that coming up on one year working together, the Bulletin mind meld is becoming kind of scary, tbh.
Our reactions are totally not the story, but I think they do help capture how utterly mind-blowing the Elite Men’s XCO race. You had Flucki going for his first rainbow jersey and Nino somehow rejuvenated after two seasons that left folks wondering if Nino was over. It was only fitting that it would come down to the last few turns to decide the 2021 XCO World Championships at Val di Sole.
If you missed it, check out our report from the Elite Women’s race we published on Monday.
Folks, Do I Even Need to Say It?
Whatever the opposite of a charmed life is, that’s what Switzerland’s Mathias Fluckiger has lived during his mountain bike career. Less than 2.5 years younger than the sport’s GOAT Nino Schurter, Fluckiger has lived in his countryman’s shadow his entire career.
Schurter and his 8 world championships, 7 national championships, and 30 World Cup wins need no introduction for most, but if you just started watching XCO Mountain Biking in 2020, you’d be asking what the big deal with this Nino guy is.
Schurter has struggled since the abbreviated 2020 season, scratching out one podium in the two 2020 World Cups and finishing a disappointing 9th at Leogang Worlds and then struggling following a second-place finish at the 2021 season-opening Albstadt World Cup.
With Schurter seemingly, dare we say, done, it is almost as if the cycling gods lifted a cosmic weight from Fluckiger’s shoulders. The Swissman has been on fire this season, finishing 3rd in the first two World Cups and then sweeping the XCC and XCO races at both Leogang and Les Gets.
While Schurter has not been himself, if there has been one pesky thorn in the side of Fluckiger’s proverbial time to shine, it has been those kids Tom Pidcock and Mathieu van der Poel. Van der Poel outdueled him for 2nd at Nove Mesto, and the Pidcock spoiled his dream of winning Olympic gold.
However, with Pidcock racing the Vuelta and Van der Poel sidelined with severe back issues, it appeared the stars were aligned for Fluckiger to take the rainbow stripes. Sure Schurter showed signs of his former self with a 4th in Tokyo, and sure there was still the Czangler, Ondrej Cink, but come on, Fluckiger deserved this based on how he has ridden this year, right?
The race started with the Czangler doing anything but dangling, as he led the prologue and into the first climb of Lap 1 proper. Behind him, Schurter made a pass of Avancini to move into 2nd position. Fluckiger sat a few wheels back.
Ondrej Cink has had an amazing season as we jokingly call him the “Czech Dangler,” but many of his dangling woes are due to his sub-par technical skills. After cresting the first climb, the riders had to navigate a rooty, sidehill descent before beginning to climb again. When Cink got slowed up by the roots, Schurter pounced on the opportunity to attack. As Cink struggled to recover, Victor Koretzky had to dismount, thus causing a backup that claimed Fluckiger among its victims.
Schurter stayed on the attack and opened up a 10-second gap on Cink and the others at tech/feed zone 1, but the group quickly erased Schurter’s advantage at the bottom of the final climb of Lap 1.
While Schurter is not at the utterly, GOAT-like form he exhibited for YEARS, it is not like he has taken getting old laying down. Schurter has made attacks early and where possible, raced like his old self. Such efforts earlier this season have been swallowed up, and so when the rest of the riders quickly reeled him in, there was a sense of, “Oh, that was fun. Let the real race start now.”
Then there was the whip.
Folks, I get that obsessing about tailwhips is probably juvenile, but this season, I have developed a Theory of the Whip. If a rider is dropping sick tailwhips off a jump, they are feeling good and on the move. If they just take the jump, they are nervous about their position and fitness and cannot leave anything to chance. One could say tailwhips are a way of making a STATEMENT, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Schurter was one of seven riders in the lead group on the descent from the final climb of Lap 1. When he was the only rider who dropped a sick whip, folks, I knew Nino Schurter … was BACK.
The lead group after Lap 1 was Schurter, Fluckiger, Cink, Avancini, Koretzky, British MTB national hero Vlad Dascalu, and Swissman Filippo Colombo.
Any thoughts that Schurter’s Lap 1 attack was a one-hit-wonder were put aside when he again led the charge into Lap 2. Fluckiger dutifully attached himself to Schurter’s wheel, and Koretzky kept the pace for a spell, but soon, Schurter and Fluckiger were off the front. After the big descent to tech/feed zone 1, the lead was 17 seconds, at the end of Lap 2, Schurter and Fluckiger had a 35-second advantage on Cink, Koretzky, Avancini, Dascalu, Colombo, and German Max Brandl.
When a race appears set for a two-up battle, things can go one of three ways. One rider can drop the other, making the duel a mere mirage, the riders can throw everything at each other in a dynamic, action-packed race, or the duo can wait for the last lap or even the end of the last lap to make things happen.
Schurter and Fluckiger chose option 3 for their Worlds battle. Honestly, not much happened in Laps 3, 4, and 5. Fluckiger made a bit of a dummy attack near the top of the second climb, before the rock drop-off, in the penultimate lap, but Schurter kept his pace. In fact, it would be hard to find a spot when the two were more than a few bike lengths apart for that entire half of the race.
In that last lap, so much was at stake. For Fluckiger, it was a chance to cap arguably the best season of his career with a world championship that Schurter had denied him for so long. For Schurter, it was probably not so much the 9th rainbow jersey as the opportunity to show folks that the old man has still got it.
And of course, and probably most importantly, to establish that he is, in fact, BACK.
In the final lap, Fluckiger led up the first climb and up into the woods. He put in a small dig on the steep section where the timing split near the top of climb two was located, but Schurter stayed firmly attached to his wheel. Literally, maybe two bike lengths separated the two as they dropped down toward the first tech/feed zone. Only one climb, one descent, and a few grassy corners remained between the two and their respective world championship stories.
After the crest of the final climb, riders descended a series of technical features before hitting a series of grass corners. The final section included a sharp left into a chicane, a straight past the final tech/feed zone, and then a sweeping right into a short sprint finish.
In the Cyclocross Media Pit, Bill talks at length about the “finish before the finish,” and in a two-up battle, the course at Val di Sole was an ultimate finish-before-the-finish situation. The final sprint was very short, so whoever led out the sprint was likely to win.
One need to look no further than Thursday’s Short Track race to see the finish-before-the-finish in action.
Sitting third wheel heading into the penultimate corner, American Christopher Blevins went all-in on a sprint past Max Brandl and Henrique Avancini to take the lead position before the final sweeping corner. Even though he was no doubt gassed from the effort, Blevins only needed to hang on for a few seconds in the final kick to hold off his rivals and take the first-ever Men’s Short Track World Championship.
I’m not saying that Schurter watched Blevins’s win, but it would be hard to argue he did not.
Schurter made a small effort to pass Fluckiger near the top of the final climb of the final lap, but Fluckiger responded and kept the lead position heading into the final descent. As amazing as Schurter is, there was no way he was going to pass Fluckiger on the rocky technical drop down the mountain. He would only have a few corners and features left to make a decisive move.
The final feature before that fated penultimate corner was a flyover. Coming off the flyover, Fluckiger went wide to the right to set himself to carry momentum through the turn. In doing so, he left the inside left line open for Schurter to take if he so desired. And you can darn well bet he desired to take that inside line.
Schurter took the inside line and cut off Fluckiger’s line through the corner. Nino now had the lead spot with two short sprints and a sweeping corner left to go.
Fluckiger’s fate was sealed and Schurter’s victory was secured. It was an absolute masterclass on how to win a bike race from arguably the sport’s all-time greatest.
It’s wild to conceive of a world where Nino Schurter is the underdog in an XCO mountain bike race, and even wilder to face a world where we have to say:
Folks, Nino Schurter … is BACK.
Whereas the battles for best of the rest have been where it’s at for the Elite Women this season, such was not the case for the men on Saturday. Victor Koretzky overcame Cink in the last lap when the Czangler had an issue with his shifter and went on to secure the 3rd spot on the podium. Vlad “British MTB Hero” Dascalu took 4th and Brandl 5th.
IDK what else there is to say about Schurter’s win. It was just an incredible performance by one of the greatest cyclists to ever play the sport. With 8 world championships to Julian Absalon’s 5, he did not even really need the dub to cement his legacy, but competitors are going to compete, and Schurter competed in the biggest way on Saturday.
If I am being honest, it has been enjoyable to watch Fluckiger race this season. As other riders’ results have shown, there are no givens in sport, so there is no guarantee Fluckiger will get another shot as golden as this one. However, he has had a phenomenal season, and he certainly enjoys another shot at a rainbow jersey and a chance to learn from that mistake of leaving that inside line open.