Hello,

Downhill racing went to all-new dust levels in Loudenvielle, France, last Sunday for round two of the 2025 DH World Cup series.

We’re used to wet races in Loudenvielle now, but there was no sign of the slick mud of the last two visits in 2023 and 2024. It was dry, but riders were still battling for grip – this time deep in dust and at warp speed.

We’ve compiled our notes and photos by  Boris, Seb and Sven below.

Hope you enjoy flicking through and getting ready for this week’s race in Leogang, Austria.

Cheers,

James
+the Misspent Summers team

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AERO TUCK: warp speed notes from the Loudenvielle, France, DH World Cup 2025

• Rewind: read our pre-race newsletter here and remind yourself what a rain-drenched race looks like in our Loudenvielle 2024 notes here
• Journalism: read George Gore Browne’s B-Zone Bullets for trackside insight and rumours
• Word: pocket
• Parched: Racers grappled with a sunbaked and super-fast course on qualifying day, with elites facing the new-style two-session qualifying system and juniors on the classic single-session qualifying. As with round one in Poland, some big names missed out on moving straight from Q1 into finals, leading to extreme stress as they lined up for a second go in Q2. Some people hate the new system; others find it highly exciting. Usually depending on which side of the tape they are standing
• Finals micro-report: race day was dry and windy, with gusts blowing riders off their lines on the flat-out open top section. With the course probably at its all-time fastest, there had been big crashes all week; several junior and elites went off-course and cartwheeling down the steep hillside. But that was never going to stop the world’s fastest racers throwing everything at their runs. Gracey Hemstreet lit up the course top to bottom, putting three seconds into Vali Höll’s time, mostly on the steeper second half of the track. Hemstreet took her first-ever elite DH World Cup win, with Höll in second and Tahnée Seagrave third
• …continued: Jackson Goldstone, returning to form after missing the entire 2024 season through injury and falling ill at round one in Poland, was only 17^th at the first split time but once things got steep, Goldstone really got going. He was effortless on the lower sections (even having time to turn on his GoPro on a bridge crossing), but ruthless at the same time, fast enough to take a 1.5s win over second-placed Amaury Pierron and nearly 3s ahead of third-placed Jordan Williams, also on a comeback from injury
• Spell check: Hoffmann still
• Juniors: Lina Frener, in her second-ever World Cup, took the win in junior women, making it a two-win day for Norco Racing Division (Hemstreet is also on the team). Bode Burke put in potentially the wildest run of the week to win junior men’s with the fifth-fastest time of the day. It’s well worth watching the junior replays if you haven’t already (or re-watching if you have)
• Full results and standings here
• Soundbite: ‘More rewarding than racing’ – Greg Minnaar, the most successful male DH World Cup racer ever, on winning from the other side of the tape as Norco’s Team Director

Continued below…

• Go Canada: Hemstreet was the first-ever Canadian woman to win an elite DH World Cup race. Plus, she was the first World Cup winner for Norco (a Canadian brand). And, of course, Goldstone is also Canadian. A good day all round! It isn’t the first time Hemstreet and Goldstone have won World Cup races on the same day though. Both riders won multiple races in their junior careers; the last time they both won on the same day was Snowshoe, USA, 2022
• Belt drive DH World Cup wins so far: 0 and counting
• Injury club: get well soon Lisa Baumann, who broke her collarbone in a race-run crash; great to hear Henry Kerr is rattled but relatively OK after his horror crash in Q2; fingers crossed Erice van Leuven, back from her Hardline Tasmania injuries only to crash out in practice and miss the race, will be back to full health again for the next races
• 2xQ2=P3: Jordan Williams won his first-ever elite DH World Cup at Lenzerheide, Switzerland, in 2023. Since then, the Brit has had some ups and downs, including long injuries. Finally, in Loudenvielle he was back at the top again and on the podium in third (having made it through to finals from the last chance qualifier, as he did in Poland too). Fairy tale stuff
• Best trick awards: Asa Vermette crashed out in the junior race but won the wheelie contest, crossing the finish line on the back wheel and riding it right out of the arena. Commendable mentions: Joe Breeden for his finish line stoppie; Finn Iles for his one footer; Loic Bruni for getting buck-wild and riding it out
• Plan to fail: UCI MTB rule 4.3.012 says DH World Cup racers must wear full-face helmets ‘fitted with a peak’. If you lose it during your race run, is that an unfair aerodynamic (or style!) advantage? Only joking, but it’s an odd rule isn’t it?
• Top points: the drone on the upper section was awesome to watch – great resolution, smooth flying, great sense of speed
• Fine line: with 10 DH World Cup races on the calendar this year and three high-stakes race runs at each event (with Q1, Q2 and finals), riders could end up pushing the limit in timed runs up to 30 times this World Cup season (if anyone’s unlucky enough to do Q1–Q2–finals at every event). That’s quite a jump from 2022, when there were 8 World Cup rounds and two high-stakes runs per race (qualifying and finals)
• Mid-course camera dangle: tipsy operator or sensitive zoom?
• Science, please: expert input required! There was a lot of talk of ‘big’ riders being faster on the straightish, fast and gusty upper section. We were wondering if ‘big’ is a real metric, or if there’s a lot more to it – rolling resistance, body shape/aerodynamics, etc. Don’t smaller riders cut through the air better? Answers appreciated (just hit reply on this email)

More below…

• History: talking of skinsuits, remember Cedric Gracia’s ‘naked’ speedsuit from 2001?
• Two from three: Jackson Goldstone hadn’t won a DH World Cup since the final round of the 2023 series. Which sounds like a fair while, but of course he didn’t race the entire 2024 season. He has won two of the last three World Cup races he’s entered, which is officially quite impressive
• Hat trick: the official MTB World Series Instagram page rapidly uploads interviews, insight and riding action from racing throughout World Cup races – it’s very active and chapeau to the social media team for their work. Slightly fewer crash videos and it will be a brilliant resource for anyone unable to pay for the live broadcast (there were three crash vids in a row on race day in Loudenvielle and roughly a third of all posts on the IG during finals was crashes and mishaps)
• Opinion: nice to see authentic turn shredding on that wonderful right hander
• Don’t mention the umbrella: 2023 junior DH World Champion Henri Kiefer made it into elite finals with a commendable seventh place in Q1. Unfortunately, things went wrong in the start gate for his finals run as something appeared to go wrong with his chain. He had already broken the timing beam but stayed in the start hut to get a bit of help from his mechanic, who did all he could to sort the problem under great pressure and on live TV using the available tools nearby. Eventually Kiefer started again, and the timer restarted. Soon after his run, it was ruled that his time would be taken from the first time he broke the start beam, resulting in time over seven minutes. With several riders disqualified for going off-course or not starting due to injury, and only 30 riders in finals, he finished 27^th, taking 36 series points. With Vital MTB asking whether the mechanical assistance is allowed or not, might other teams bring this back up as the season – and the series rider and team points chases – grinds on?
• Name game: Alliance, Collective, Cooperative, Syndicate, After Skull
• Thanks: a huge thank you to everyone making our racing coverage possible. To Boris, Seb and Sven for their outstanding photography, all the contributors and writers, the brands supporting our work and you for reading
• Get involved: if you like our stuff and want to contribute, every order on our store helps us continue recording the history of mountain biking. Massive thanks to everyone supporting Misspent Summers!

 

Further reading:
A note from XC World Cup 2025 Round 3
Bermed Out

Notes newsletters are compiled with the help of many contributors. Thank you to everyone who chips in – we love doing this stuff and you make it possible.