Hello,

Before we go head-on back into the downhill and enduro World Cup season, here’s a recap of last weekend’s 2024 DH World Championships from Pal Arinsal, Andorra.

Below you’ll find photos by Sven Martin and Boris Beyer, notes, analysis and ponderings by the Misspent Summers crew, and links to stuff and things we think you should check out.

Enjoy and stay tuned for our coverage of DH and EDR World Cup racing from Loudenvielle, France, this week.

By the way, our new yearbooks will be available to pre-order on our store soon.

Cheers,

James
+the Misspent Summers team

PRODUCT: CHOOSE MTB PRINT

BACK AND FORTH: notes from Pal Arinsal, Andorra, World Championships 2024

• Chicken dinners: congratulations to the winners, runners-up, and every single rider who made it to Worlds – thanks for always putting on a great show. Check the full results with downloadable PDFs here
• Quick recap: read George Gore Browne’s B-Zone Bullets here
• Past future: Dan Roberts wrote a from-the-ground event overview for us, which we put in our pre-notes newsletter. You can read (or re-read) it here (scroll down). Some good insider info
• Pure action: there’s live racing, and then there’s the Sleeper Shreddit. Watch it here
• Word: pilot
• Elite men’s winner Loris Vergier injured his thumb in Les Gets and spent the break in races recovering, but the sore paw didn’t seem to affect his race run here – in fact, he was faster at the end of the run than the start, going from sixth at split four to first at the finish line. The race was won in the last 24 seconds of the track, where Vergier pulled back nearly half a second to sneak in front of Benoît Coulanges in second and Finn Iles in third
• Vali Höll scored her third elite World Championships in a row after her wins in Fort William, Scotland, in 2023 and Les Gets, France, in 2022. She became the fourth rider in history to score a hat-trick of Worlds wins, following in the footsteps of Nico Vouilloz, Anne-Caroline Chausson and Loic Bruni (she’s got some work ahead to beat Chausson’s eight-win streak). Höll wasn’t completely enamoured with the fast track, saying she’d prefer more tech, but she impressively carved through the upper turns and rocketed through the lower woods to take the victory from Myriam Nicole in second and Tahnée Seagrave in third. Just like Vergier, Höll was behind at split four but turned it around in the final section
• Automatic sprinklers: some emotions just can’t be faked. When Vergier saw Loic Bruni was on a storming run and looking likely to win, he was clearly genuinely happy for his friend; seconds later, when Bruni crashed and Vergier realised the win was his, he instantly burst into tears of joy. That’s the rollercoaster ride that is downhill racing and part of why it’s so exciting to follow as a fan
• Quote: ‘Thanks to Loic [for crashing]’ – Loris Vergier
• Gnat’s whisker: the elite men’s top five was separated by under half a second, and the elite women’s top five was split by just two seconds. For random comparison’s sake, when Danny Hart won in Champéry in 2011, he was over 11 seconds clear of second place and nearly 15 seconds separated the top five elite men

Continued below…

 

• Stoked: big up Propain Positive/Misspent Summers riders Soc and Marco for making it to Worlds and killing it. Thanks for representing!
• Asa Vermette’s junior men’s win was the first DH World Champs title (elite or junior) since Richie Rude in 2013 (junior win, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Myles Rockwell was the last elite title winner from the USA with his win in Sierra Nevada, Spain, in 2000). But, despite Vermette’s time challenging the top elites (junior finals was the same day as elite qualifying; his race-winning time beat Loic Bruni’s top elite qualifying time), the win didn’t come easy. Vermette was 1.5 seconds behind Max Alran at split three (of four) but turned up the heat to take the race win by 1.5 seconds at the finish line
• Erice van Leuven made it three wins in a row for New Zealand junior women – van Leuven also won last year, and Jenna Hastings won in 2022. Like Vermette, van Leuven’s race-winning time beat the elite women’s fastest qualifying time (on the same day) and, even more impressive, was the fastest women’s time of the week, a few tenths faster than Höll’s elite winning time. Wow. Arguably, van Leuven rode her finals on a different day to the elites, with different course conditions. But Höll was already beating the elites when she was a junior, too, and there’s no doubt that van Leuven will be pushing for wins and upping the level when she moves into elite next year
• No cigar yet: in racing, there are always what-might-have-beens, but while Bruni’s crash grabbed the headlines, Dak Norton was also on a baller and was half a second faster than Vergier at the fourth split before sliding out within sight of the finish. Honourable mentions go to Danny Hart and Gracey Hemstreet, both shaking things up with season-best results
• Not ‘tired: hang on, was that Mick Hannah? Yep! The veteran racer officially hung up his World Cup boots after a couple of decades of top-tier racing in 2021, but since then, he’s been the most restless retiree in the sport, racing all manner of Crankworx and E-EDR races. He raced the Les Gets World Cup earlier this year and made it onto the Australian World Champs team, his 20^th Worlds. Sick!
• Talking of retirement, Greg Minnaar announced that Pal Arinsal was his last-ever World Championships (we’ll see about that). Minnaar has raced 28 Worlds during his career, winning four times in 2003, 2012, 2013 and 2021. What a hero
• Chores: wheel weights, frame weights, mass dampers (biscuit tins), Flight Attendant; plus, all the TradTechTM like, er, data logging. There’s a lot of admin in downhill these days (thanks Phil Atwill for that turn of phrase)
• Day for it: last year’s World Cup race here was rain affected, with storms forcing schedule changes on finals day. This time there were no problems for the downhill crowd on Saturday, but forecast afternoon storms wreaked havoc with Sunday’s XC World Champs: racing was brought forward into the morning, races were shortened, and both elite and U23 women’s races were combined as one mega-category (with separate results)

More below…

• Trivia: the last time DH World Champs was in Andorra, the race was on the old Vallnord track that plummeted through the woods down into the town of La Massana, right by the Commencal Bikes HQ. That course was retired when, er, someone built a block of flats on the finish area. Since 2022, we’ve had two World Cups and now one World Champs on the Pal Arinsal course higher up the mountain and not far from the original World Cup course from 2008. There have been eight World Cup or Champs races on the various Andorran courses, and of the 16 total elite wins (men and women), all but two have been won by French or British racers. Australia’s Troy Brosnan (2017) and Austria’s Vali Höll (2024) are the exceptions to the rule
• Continuing that tangent, France is by far the leader in elite DH World Championship wins, with a total of 16 men’s and 16 women’s wins (many of those belonging to Nico Vouilloz and Anne-Caroline Chausson) since 1990. Britain is runner-up with 7 men’s and 7 women’s wins
• Veering onto a more severe tangent now – and this really is quite tenuous: 2015 was Loic Bruni’s first-ever elite World Champs title right here in Andorra, but it was also the last-ever year of Dirt Magazine (RIP). So much happened at that World Champs that went unrecorded in print that we decided to make a downhill yearbook. It didn’t happen overnight, but by 2016 we’d produced the first Hurly Burly and haven’t looked back since (so to speak – we’re always looking back at stuff)
• Breathless racing: Pal Arinsal’s course had the highest start line of any DH World Champs since Vail, USA, in 2001 (tangentially, that race was just a few days after 9/11). Here’s a list of high-flying World Champs start line altitudes courtesy of Point1Athletic’s Chris Kilmurray: Pal-Arinsal 2024, 2,343m; Lenzerheide 2018, 1,899m; Livigno 2005, 2,315m; Vail 2001, >3,000m
• Not an ad: six out of six elites on the podium rode Crankbrothers Mallet pedals. This isn’t an endorsement (we’re all flat pedal riders anyway), but you gotta admit that’s impressive
• Until next time: the 2025 DH World Champs will be in Champéry, Switzerland, the site of legendary races (Sam Hill, 2007, pouring rain; Danny Hart, 2011, pouring rain, etc). A couple of weeks ago, an oversubscribed European Champs took to the steep Champéry hillside and, er, many folks fell off it, too. Despite being much more rideable than its original off-camber, rooty, greasy version, the modern course is still perilously vertical and has a nasty bite for anyone getting carried away – it’s easy to build speed, almost impossible to shave any off. And, it’s almost entirely in the trees. World Champs 2025 will be a whole lot different to the fast, open, dusty Pal Arinsal slopes. We already can’t wait
• That’s all for now, folks: our coverage of the 2024 downhill and enduro season reboots this week in Loudenvielle, France. We’ll be back soon with our pre-notes email. In the meantime, stay tuned to our IG for live updates and plenty of amazing photos from Boris, Seb and Sven
• Big thanks to everyone contributing to our newsletters, website, books and general stuff and things. And to anyone reading, purchasing or spreading the word. Cheers!