Hello,

This weekend Bielsko-Biała in Poland provided all-out action and brought in thousands of fans to three days of MTB World Series racing, starting with Friday’s Enduro World Cup.

As usual, our crew was trackside capturing the action for The World Stage and our online stuff. Big thanks to Boris and Sven for braving the weather and reporting back.

Hope you enjoy reliving the race and keep an eye out for our downhill notes, coming right up.

Cheers,

James
+the Misspent Summers team

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK: ENDURO YEARBOOK ’23

DICEY ICY: Notes from a slippery Bielsko-Biała Enduro World Cup (EDR) R2 2024

• Vibe: local fans took the noise level to 11, lining the stages and ringing the hell out of chainsaws, strimmers and rims – all the hallmarks of a true core mountain bike crowd
• Bumps galore: while the trails looked relatively easy on first inspection, protruding rocks and roots and endless changes of direction made it tricky to carry momentum. Lose your flow and you’d pay the price as the rough surface made it difficult to get back to race pace
• Results: Elite men top-three: 1. Charles Murray, 2. Slawomir Lukasik, 3. Richie Rude. Elite women top-three: 1. Isabeau Courdurier, 2. Harriet Harnden, 3. Chloe Taylor. U21 winners: Bailey Christie (U21 Men), Simona Kuchynkova (U21 Women). Full results and standings here
• Word: grease
• Highlights: ex-pro EWS and E-EDR racer Josh Carlson looks comfy in his new gig as main host for the official enduro highlights, and this week’s show is some of the best enduro coverage in a while, with plenty of insight and oomph. Love it. Watch the full highlights here
• Cut to commercial: notice the mid-video ad break? Pretty big time
• Fantasy league: check out the Race Companion enduro leader board here
• Enduro of the week award: Raphaela Richter wrote-off her derailleur on stage two so she ran all the way to stage three and got there with time to spare, raced the stage chainless, repaired it at the tech zone afterwards and carried on to finish the day 18^th
• Not idle: Harriet Harnden opted for a smaller-travel, not-so-high-pivot Trek Fuel EX for this round (at R1 in Finale she was on a 170mm-travel Slash)

Continued below…

• • Rain pain: Group A elite women – the top-10-ish in the rankings (can anyone explain who makes it into Group A? Asking for a friend) – start their race about 30 mins after Group B (everyone else) so that they ride at a similar time to the Group A elite men (if all the women rode first, then all the men, or vice-versa, the film crew would have a difficult time following both categories around the entire day). A downpour during stage two left the track treacherous for the later group and led to some considerable time gaps in the stage results, putting top racers on the catch-up for the rest of the day. For the top men, conditions were slick but more consistent
  • Feedback: riders mostly loved the event for its crowds, fun trails and tight racing
  • Winner: Charlie Murray brought it home with his first-ever World Cup win by the narrowest of margins, with just 0.095s between him and Slawomir Lukasik in second. Murray’s first-ever EWS was in 2018 and he’s been trending upwards ever since. In 2023, he had single-digits results at all but one of the EDR rounds; in Finale this year he finished second, his best-ever result at that point (bettering his third-place finish in Val di Fassa, Italy, 2021), and this week he went right to the top. First thing the next day he was riding as course sweeper for the DH race
  • Kiwi power: Murray is the sixth New Zealander to win an elite EWS or EDR. The other five are Justin Leov, Wyn Masters, Keegan Wright, Ed Masters and Matt Walker
  • Winner: despite losing over 20 seconds on stage two, Isabeau Courdurier moved back through the ranks to take the overall race lead after stage three. She and Harriet Harnden battled for the overall race win, but Courdurier came out victorious by just 0.236s
  • Tangent: Courdurier has raced in every season of EWS/EDR since the very start in 2013, with her first win in Derby, Tasmania, in 2017. In Finale this year, she announced that she’ll be taking a break after this season to start a family, but she’s showing no signs of slowing down – Bielsko-Biała was her 52^nd EWS-EDR podium, her 21^st win and she leads the series going into round three
  • Context: in the 11-and-a-bit seasons (82 races, not counting Crested Butte in 2015, which was cancelled) of EWS-EDR racing, seven nations have won elite men’s races (FRA, AUS, IRL, USA, BEL, NZL, CAN); in the women’s, only French and British riders have ever won
  • Can you repeat that: stages one and four shared the same first 70ish seconds of trail before splitting off
  • Standout ride: Chloe Taylor’s first EDR podium must be the result of the event. Taylor and Bex Baraona set up their own team, Gowaan Racing, in the off-season
  • Multi-tasker: Emmy Lan raced EDR on Friday (5^th in U21) and downhill on Saturday (22^nd in elite qualifying)
  • Standings: elite men: 1. Charles Murray (871 points), 2. Richard Rude Jr. (859), 3. Slawomir Lukasik (728). Elite women: 1. Isabeau Courdurier (893 points), 2. Harriet Harnden (891), 3. Ella Conolly (681). U21 men: 1. Bailey Christie (476 points), 2. JT Fisher (362), 3. William Brodie (344). U21 women: 1. Lily Planquart (426 points), 2. Simona Kuchynkova (374), 3. Elly Hoskin (315). Full standings here
  • Unhandy error: Ed Masters raced with two left gloves – one upside down

  More below…

• Hit and run: Andréane Lanthier Nadeau (AKA ALN) finished sixth, her best result since 2022. But she almost didn’t finish at all: on the transfer between stages one and two, she was smashed into by an e-biker (nothing to do with the race – just a member of the public going too fast for their skill level), the hefty impact throwing her to the ground and bending her front wheel. The culprit fled the scene, but after some help from fellow racers and passersby, ALN made it to her stage two start in time and the rest is history
• Broken brake: Alex Rudeau had a mechanical on stage one but, as the end of the track was near the tech assistance zone, where riders are allowed outside help from their teams, he managed to nip back, get it fixed and carry on
• Did succeed: there were three elite DNFs this week, down from 23 in Finale
• Correction: in our pre-race notes newsletter we slightly guesstimated that Hugo Pigeon was the only rider to race both EDR and E-EDR in Finale, but thankfully Seb from Roots and Rain picked up on our lazy fact checking. Emeric Ienzer and Laurin Voth also raced both disciplines
• On that note: here at home in Poland, Slawomir ‘Slawdog’ Lukasik came oh-so-close to winning the elite men’s EDR (2^nd by a gnat’s whisker) on Friday then went out and won the E-EDR on Sunday! Beast. (Last week Lukasik was leading the Finale EDR until a front puncture on the last stage – he’s on fire this season)
• They’re electric: every rider competing in Saturday’s elite women’s E-EDR has won an E-EWS or E-EDR. In fact, between the five racers, they have won every E-EWS or E-EDR in history (17 races since 2020). Flo Espiñeira took the victory here, making it two from two so far this season
• Full E-EDR results here
• Trivia: total tangent here but did you know that 16 world champions from various cycling disciplines competed in the first-ever EWS in Punta Ala, Italy, 2013?
• Future worlds: it’s great to see the 2025 Enduro World Championships are official on the Valais 2025 website (Valais in Switzerland will be hosting all the mountain bike disciplines in a multi-venue MTB World Champs next year). Fingers crossed for the 2024 announcement soon
• Chat: red glow ‘25
• Comment quote: after suffering almost constant abuse and negativity since the start of the year, the MTB World Series Instagram account is finally receiving a wealth of positive comments. Some of our favourites include ‘Technology [rocket emoji]’ by pravin_rajpit_1111, ‘Jubliant [celebration emoji]’ by vdjn_t, ‘Infinite [infinity emoji]’ by dharm8067, and ‘Vivacity [rainbow enjoi]’ by 3581.anaya
• Next up: EDR and E-EDR round three is in Leogang, Austria, on 7 June at a dual-discipline event alongside R3 of the DH World Cup (there’s no XC this year)
• Our view: Eddie Masters said in our final enduro notes newsletter of 2023 that ‘the pieces of the puzzle are still there, just somewhere along the line the everything’s been muddled up’, in reference to the mixed bag of Enduro World Cups last year and widespread worry about the sport’s future among racers, teams and fans. While R1 in Finale last week had its hiccups, Poland was pretty spot-on and feels like the organisers and their media team are putting in extra effort to put things on an upward trajectory
• Thanks: big thank you as ever to our yearbook photograhers Sven, Boris and Seb for the outstanding work, to the brands that support us and to you for reading! If you like what we do, please consider checking out our store