We Were Into Richardsmania Before Richardsmania Was Cool
Race Report and Analysis of the Elite Women's XCO World Championships
As they do every four years (on average), the Olympics took up most of the oxygen in the XCO Mountain Bike world this year. However, even though the Olympics are the big thing on the calendar, it’s not like they cancel the World Championships or whatever. Someone has to wear that rainbow jersey, after all. IDK, maybe they should make Jolanda Neff and Tom Pidcock race with gold medals around their necks, or at least get them Henrique Avancini’s gold helmet.
The 2021 XCO World Championships took place on Saturday in Val di Sole, Italy. Located in northeast Italy, the Val di Sole Bike Park is situated in the Italian Dolomite Mountains. Interestingly, while one might quickly assume the name translates to Valley of the Sun, the etymology of the name is likely related to the Celtic god of thermal springs, Solis, and the abundance of hot springs in the region. You learn something every day, apparently.
The course featured what could really be considered three climbs per lap. The first two climbs were kind of disjointed, with riders having to tackle a set of rollers on an incline and several up-and-downs that generally trended upward. The descents were technical, with several rock gardens and a steep rock drop-off that gave some of the top riders trouble. Riders then rode through a meadow before taking on a longer climb with less elevation gain than the first before descending back down to complete the lap.
In the first of a two-part series, we take a look at the Elite Women’s race, where a familiar name officially put her name on the mountain bike map. And like the true cyclocross punk rockers we are, one could argue we were into her before it was cool.
A Star is Born
Right up until the start of the Elite Women’s race at the Olympic Games, the story of the season was the dominance of Loana Lecomte. Still a U23 racer, Lecomte won each of the four World Cups—most in dominating fashion—and appeared to be the odds-on favorite for the race in Tokyo. However, being good on paper does not mean much if it does not translate to success on the course.
Lecomte had a tough day, finishing sixth, while Jolanda “Sendy Poof” Neff showed the world she is BACK by grabbing the lead early on and riding away with the gold medal as many expected Lecomte to win.
Despite the young Frenchwoman’s struggles in Tokyo, the top riders likely breathed a sigh of relief knowing Lecomte was going to race the U23 race in a much-anticipated matchup with Austrian wunderkind Mona Mittenwallner, who has been dominating the U23 field this season. Unfortunately for fans and the two women themselves, Lecomte ended up withdrawing from the race due to illness. And spoiler alert, Mittens won the U23 Women’s World Championship quite easily.
With Neff BACK and Lecomte out, the Elite Women’s race became a much more interesting proposition. Pauline Ferrand-Prevot has been relegated to second fiddle among the French women this season, but she has still raced well and had designs on her fourth XCO rainbow jersey. Other women who raced well in the third and fourth World Cups were Evie Richards and Jenny Rissveds, while young talent Sina Frei of Switzerland demonstrated the potential she showed at a U23 rider with a silver in Tokyo and then a win in the first-ever Short-Track World Championships on Thursday.
As we saw at Les Gets when Ferrand-Prevot got a little argy-bargy with Lecomte early in the race, PFP seems to be a bit frustrated by the rapid ascension of Lecomte. Big early attacks on the climbs used to be her thing, but this season, she has been unable to keep pace with Lecomte’s effortless climbing. Nearly from the get, it appeared Ferrand-Prevot knew she was rid of her Lecomte burden and was ready to continue the French tradition of shaking the race up early.
After a brief prologue lap that kept the field relatively intact, Ferrand-Prevot took the initiative on the steep first climb. After Neff led the field through a series of somewhat awkward rollers, Ferrand-Prevot moved around her and attacked when the track turned to double-track. The two got a quick gap on a group that included Olympic bronze medalist Linda Indergand, Evie Richards, and a seemingly rejuvenated Kate Courtney.
Ferrand-Prevot attacked with purpose, staying on the gas through a series of ups and downs that riders navigated as they ascended the mountain. Neff, despite her BACKness, could not match PFP’s pace, and by the time she reached the top of the first of the three climbs, the two-time defending world champion had an 18-second lead on Neff.
While Neff has been regaining form following her bad crash early in 2020, she has seemingly struggled on the longer climbs this season. After withstanding the PFP attack, she faded a bit on the second climb as Richards and Frei moved their way forward.
Frei was a budding star as a U23 rider, winning U23 Worlds in 2017 and 2019 and taking silver in 2016 and 2018. Frei finished 2nd at the Tokyo test event and took 4th at Leogang Worlds in 2020, but she has not necessarily broken through on a regular basis in the World Cups, finishing down in the 7th to 9th range in most races the last two years.
Maybe it is the confidence that comes with, IDK, winning a silver medal at the Olympics, but Frei continued her strong riding into Worlds with a win in the inaugural Short-Track championship and then making the early chase with Richards.
We have told the story before, but us cyclocross folks [points nose to the sky, somewhat snobbishly] have known about Richards since she won the first-ever U23 Women’s Cyclocross World Championship in 2016 as a 19-year-old. She won Namur in 2017 as a 20-year-old and added another U23 title in 2018. She also raced well as a U23 mountain bike rider, frequently competing with Frei as part of the same age class.
Despite those palmares, it seems people were a bit surprised (?) when she won the short-track races at both Nove Mesto World Cups during the shortened COVID season of 2020. Which was weird, because she finished on 16 podiums in the U23 category from 2016 to 2019. It’s not like she just Poof! (said with a cheeky English accent, of course) came out of nowhere.
Richards backed up her short-track success with a 6th-place finish in the second Nove Mesto World Cup last fall to show her success as a U23 was not a fluke. This season, however, she has continued to elevate her game.
After a result in the World Cup series opener we are just going to elide past, Richards finished 5th at Nove Mesto, 6th at Leogang, and then scored her first Elite podium with a 3rd at Les Gets. Even after taking 7th in Tokyo, Richards’s trajectory has been generally pointing upward.
If you were looking for an early sign that Saturday’s race was going to be the latest incarnation of Richardsmania, the start was a good place to … start. Despite starting on the second row, Richards quickly moved up to 8th 20 seconds into the race, and then less than a minute later, made a powerful outside move to grab more spots and move into 4th place.
She held that forward position and helped lead the early chase when Ferrand-Prevot went rocketing up the first climb. Richards then continued forward to join Frei as the chase of PFP at the base of the third climb of the first lap. The two young guns, however, had their work cut out for them, as Ferrand-Prevot’s lead sat at 31 seconds after the first of five laps. Behind them, a group of Dutchwoman Anne Terpstra, Rebecca McConnell, Neff, and Maja Wloszczovka of Poland, racing in her final race, gave chase 52 seconds behind the leader.
Ferrand-Prevot used a similar approach to win in Leogang, going out hard early and ultimately winning the race with relative ease. Possession of that “move” has kind of been given to Lecomte, so with an early lead, Ferrand-Prevot seemed poised to regain that “shock-and-awe” magic.
Unfortunately for her, Evie Richards was on the scene.
We have covered this on the Media Pit this season, but one of the knocks against Richards as a mountain biker is she’s not a pure climber the way some of the other riders are. That may be the case, but she is a powerhouse and a bulldog of a rider, and the disjointed climbs of the Val di Sole course suited her skillset perfectly.
Richards erased nearly half of Ferrand-Prevot’s lead on the first climb of Lap 2 and then used her strong technical skills—especially vis-a-vis PFP—to eat away at the rest of the gap on the descents. Richards ended up wasting little time erasing Ferrand-Prevot’s lead, making the catch in the flat stretch through the meadow between the second and third climbs. For good measure, Richards then powered past Ferrand-Prevot on that third climb, if just to send a little message that she was neither shocked nor awed by Ferrand-Prevot’s early fireworks.
Ferrand-Prevot got to send her shot across the bow in the first lap, and in the third, it was Richards’s turn to return the favor. Richards led into the first climb, with Ferrand-Prevot keeping pace with her up the inclined rollers. However, more steep ascents with ensuing quick drops followed, and Richards’s extreme power allowed her to slowly open up a gap. By the time the two reached the time split at the top of that first climb, Richards had a 13-second lead. That advantage would swell to 38 seconds by the end of the third of five laps.
Meanwhile, at the end of Lap 2, the chase swelled to Neff, McConnell, Terpstra, Frei, and Wloszczowka. In Lap 3, Terpstra moved into solo third and closed the gap to the fading Ferrand-Prevot, chasing only 7 seconds with two laps to go.
Richards’s last two laps were a coronation more than anything, as Ferrand-Prevot faded and Richards continued powering forward. She carried a 56-second advantage into the final lap and rode near flawlessly in final trip around the circuit.
Despite holding a minute advantage on a chase that never challenged her, in a move that was Peak Evie, Richards repeatedly looked over her shoulder in the final few turns to ensure that no one was coming up behind her. Rest assured folks, she had the rainbow jersey firmly secured. Richards has always been a humble rider who genuinely seems surprised by her own success, so it was fitting she would expect her greatest career triumph to date to somehow be taken away at the last minute.
“I can’t believe it. I’m really shocked,” was the first thing Richards said in her post-race interview. She added, “I didn’t think I’d ever be good enough to win a race like this. I’m so shocked.”
It appears Richards will have a full season to not be shocked any longer as she will proudly be wearing the rainbow stripes as the first British woman to win the XCO World Championships.
Behind the Richardsmania coronation, Terpstra caught and dropped Ferrand-Prevot on the first climb of Lap 4 and then opened up a 45-second cushion back to the chase group. She was not challenged en route to finishing second.
With one lap to go, the chase was down to Wloszczowska, Neff, Frei, and a fading Ferrand-Prevot.
Of note in the group was Polish legend Wloszczowska. At 37 years old, Wloszczowska hit the start line at Val di Sole knowing it would be the last XCO race of her decorated career. She won Worlds in 2010, finished 2nd five times, and took silver at both the 2008 and 2016 Olympics. However, her last Worlds podium was in 2013, and winning the chase, and thus the bronze, would be a perfect cap to her racing career.
Unfortunately, the special finish was not meant to be, as Wloszczowska nearly crashed on the steep rock drop-off located at the top of the second climb, and she dropped back to a 5th position she would not recover from.
The final podium spot came down to a battle between Neff and Frei. The two were wheel-to-wheel up the final climb of the final lap, with Frei leading the way up the climb and ensuing descent. Heading into the final corner of the short finishing sprint, Frei still led while Neff appeared to test a wide outside line. She could not get by, and Frei continued her strong late-summer surge with the Worlds bronze.
Wloszczowska followed behind in 5th, getting the traditional send-off from the mechanics as she passed the technical zone.
Check back later today with a look at the Elite Men’s race.
It was a great race and win for Evie and she clearly can lay down the power on punchy climbs etc. A lot of times in the past she had faded in the back half of races so nice to see her get better over the course of this one.
Regarding men’s race I couldn’t help think about Pidders - I know he needs / wants grand tour experience but instead of slaving away at La Vuelta, he likely could have ridden away from the field at this Worlds. Guess Ineos doesn’t see a rider in MTB rainbows to be as meaningful? And what a weekend for Blevins!