Hello,

We’re here in sunny (at times) Leogang, Austria, for the third rounds of DH and EDR World Cup racing of the year.

Below you’ll find some warm-up notes and photos from this week so far. Don’t forget to follow the enduro race live timing today (link below) and stay tuned for our post-race notes newsletters.

Hope you enjoy looking through the stuff below, including stunning images by Sven Martin.

If you like what we do, don’t forget to check out our yearbooks. They’re full of reporting, analysis and action from every round of World Cup racing each season. By buying them, you keep our wheels turning so we can continue recording the history of the sport.

Cheers,

James
+the Misspent Summers team

PRODUCT: SPENT 2

GREASY PAN: Pre-race notes from the Leogang, Austria, DH and EDR World Cups 2024

• Refresher: get a full (kind of) recap of everything that went down at the last enduro (EDR) and downhill (DH) World Cup rounds in Poland in our post-race notes features – Dicey-Icey EDR here, Tipsy-Turvey DH here
• It’s all in the details: geek your way through the full Leogang schedule and race book (rules, info, etc.) here
• Start list for Leogang EDR here
• Live: keep up with the action for EDR finals (Friday), DH qualifying and semi-finals (Saturday) and DH finals (Sunday) in the live timing here
• Full results: we’ll post the full results PDFs for EDR here and DH here as soon as each race session finishes during the weekend
• Where to watch: EDR highlights will appear on the MTB World Series YouTube after the race; junior DH finals will be broadcast on the Live section of the MTBWS ‘Tube on Sunday from 12:15 CEST; find out where to watch elite DH finals from 13:45 CEST on Sunday in this official guide
• Series standings before Leogang: Loic Bruni and Vali Höll lead the elite DH series points overall after round two in Poland, with Asa Vermette and Heather Wilson leading the juniors. Charlie Murray and Isabeau Courdurier lead the elite EDR standings, with Bailey Christie and Lily Planquart leading the under-21s
• Fantasy: join the Race Companion fantasy league here
• Question time: watch the official press conference with Vali Höll, Rónán Dunne and more here
• News flash: stop press! EDR and E-EDR World Champs has just been confirmed for Val di Fassa Trentino, Italy, this 14-15 September. Good times! Congratulations to the organisers for getting it, er, organised, and we can’t wait for the first-ever Enduro Worlds (possible acronym: EWS). Read all about it here
• Vibe: relatively relaxed
• History: take a trip back to Leogang DH 2019 in ‘Temple of Speed’, a race report extract from Hurly Burly here

Continued below…

Focus on enduro

• Venue: Leogang has been on the downhill circuit since 2010 and has hosted DH World Cup and World Champs events every year since, with enduro joining the fun for the first time in 2023. (Often there is also XC here, but for 2024 it’s a gravity-only party)
• Weather check: foggy, occasional storms, intermittent root grease
• EDR stats: riders cover nearly 75km, using Leogang-Saalbach’s lift network to get between the 6 race stages. Total in-stage descending is nearly 2,500m, with stages varying from short 1km tech blasts to 3.6km beasts
• EDR course details: following much of the same route as the first EDR here last year, Friday’s race takes in a whole lot of rooty, rocky, slippery ripping through the woods on techy tracks that would be pure feelgood mountain biking if they weren’t so greasy. There are several sketchy wooden bridges to look out for too. Overall a solid mix of terrain and a hefty day on the push bike
• Key to the EDR: with a high proportion of the day spent transferring between stages on rugged Alpine singletrack, rough bike park tracks and flat-out fireroad blasting, staying focused and keeping the bike in one piece is likely to be important
• Word: mum
• Timed travel: there’s a whole hour less on the schedule compared to last year to get from the roll out (race start) in Leogang, up the mountain, over and down to Saalbach and to stage one. In 2023, riders early at the first stage and waited an hour for their start times; but stage one last year was on the near side of the Saalbach valley, whereas this time it’s further away on the opposite side. Times are tight all round in 2024
• Feedback: tyre choice is either critical or, er, won’t make the slightest difference, depending on who you ask (read on)
• Our pal Greg Callaghan gave us this report after practice: We’ve got some lovely classic enduro tech this week. Intermittent rain has made the tracks maximum slippery and the diverse terrain between stages is making tyre choice real hard. Stages one, two and four are quite hard pack and rocky, so dry tyres would be good, but three, five and six are more dirt and roots, making a mud tyre a good choice for those. So you’ll probably have the wrong tyres no matter what you do! It’s looking like a race where everyone will probably have a few mistakes or mishaps, minimising those and being good at riding with your feet off will probably lead to a good result. If anyone can complete the race with no dabs, fair play to them
• Coming to a screen near you*: word has it that stage six will be broadcast on the big screens in the finish area – good stuff and fingers crossed

More below…

Focus on downhill

• DH course stats: 2.17km length, 469m elevation drop, average gradient 21.6%
• DH course details: over the years Leogang’s DH course has at times been contentious, with riders sometimes saying it is too easy. Aha! – not so since 2020 and the classic track’s diversion into the steep, deep (mud or dust, but mainly mud) and rooty lower woods section. The current course blends high speeds, big jumps and monster tech, making it well-rounded if a little low on lines. For 2024, some areas have been opened up, making the track wider in the quest for extra choice, but riders and line spotters are saying there’s pretty much only one fast option. So, pedal to the metal one line and the race will likely come down to tenths or hundredths of seconds when the clock stops on Sunday
• Fast-dry: the 2023 elite male winner’s average speed (in dry conditions) was 43.6km/h; elite women’s was 38.5km/h
• Weather: err, things are looking a bit iffy with more thunderstorms forecast during the weekend. Fingers crossed for sunshine and fair racing
• Pandemic update: after Fox’s highly successful Speedsuit viral social media takeover at Fort William, you now can’t look anywhere without seeing a rider striking a folded-arms pose for a menacing photo or twirling for a video. Suggested marketing slogan: Speedsuit, you’ve either got it or you don’t. To be fair, there’s some mean looking kit out there
• Continuing the tangent, UCI rule book rule 4.18.017 states that all riders within a UCI MTB Elite Team must wear clothing with identical major sponsor placement, look, colour scheme and layout. But hang on! Downhill Elite Teams are the exception to the rule – they can do whatever they want, no need to get their custom kit in a twist. Any guesses why?
• Research underway: has DH and EDR racing ever been tighter than in 2024?
• Jammed: coach Chris ‘Point1Athletic’ Kilmurray points out there are 186 elite men entered to race DH here and over 350 total riders. That’s a lot of course traffic! He says early in the season there are often lots of entries (presumably before riders start dropping off injured, run out of money or just give up), and with the UCI Team system, many people are eligible to race, as registered UCI Teams or Elite Teams can enter up to 10 riders (if you aren’t on a team, you need to score points to be eligible for World Cups – ask Adam Brayton). There are 164 registered UCI Teams across the MTB disciplines
• Track record: who could forget Stevie Smith’s 2013 DH World Cup finals run here? Smith had all the pressure as the last rider down the hill but put in an inspired ride, carving and cutting his way down the course in trademark style to take the race win by over a second and the series overall title too – the first-ever Canadian DH World Cup overall. As Smith crossed the finish line, he spun around to look at the results, launching his bike in the process like it weighed nothing then threw his arms in the air victorious. It was a dramatic climax and a huge achievement: Gee Atherton had led the series all season long, right up to this final run of the season and Smith turned the tables literally at the very last second. Search it out on YouTube for some truly exhilarating racing
• Electro talk: the mid-track Motorway section always causes a lot of chat (wind/no wind; the difference a good run on the stump section before makes; dust from quad bikes riding alongside it, etc.). With electronic suspension settings all the rage in 2024, do you need to be wired in to win the Motorway – and the race?
• Time’s ticking: the DH course has never been longer in time for elite men than in its first edition in 2010 when Greg Minnaar won with a time of 4:05.65 in grimy conditions. Despite variable weather, and the carnage of the lower woods during World Champs in 2020, at every other race since 2010 the elite men have always finished under four minutes. Last year was the first time they went under three, with Andreas Kolb winning in 2:59.34
• First for everything: Leogang has produced some classic first-time elite World Cup wins, including Floriane Pugin (2011), Josh Bryceland (2014 – the same year Aaron Gwin lit it up with no rear tyre), Tahnée Seagrave (2017), Camille Balanche (2021), Andreas Kolb (2023)
• People we say we support but they probably support us more: good luck to Phil Atwill and his Propain Positive team; Billy Pugh (racing his second-ever junior DH World Cup after missing Poland to finish his GCSE exams); and of course Misspent Summers co-director Morgane Charre (racing the EDR today)
• Thanks: big up Sven, Boris and Seb for the outstanding photos and graft they put in at every single race to capture the history of the sport for our yearbooks. Thanks to everyone who contributes to our notes newsletters. And to you for reading! Stay tuned for our Leogang EDR and DH roundup notes, coming right up