See this article and others in Hurly Burly 2019.
Words: Ric McLaughlin || Photo: Sven Martin, Boris Beyer and Sebastian Schieck
Time, as any fan of downhill racing will tell you, is a fickle thing. There should be no semblance between the ferocious, front-wheel bating of a matador extraordinaire like Amaury Pierron and the millimetre precision of the laser-guided Loic Bruni. Yet there is.
Speed is not judged by appearance, merely the ticking of a clock. Sometimes it is a tiny amount and sometimes it takes much longer.
There is a racetrack just outside of Milan in the north of Italy called Autodromo Nazionale Monza. It has hosted Grand Prix motorsport since 1922. On the face of it, there is not much in the way of technical challenge at Monza. Instead, its challenge lies in the plethora of minuscule inputs and calculations that are needed to unlock its fastest lap times. Racers barrel into chicanes, brake as hard as they dare, pray for grip then push the loud pedal as early as their rubber allows. Every inch of the circuit, one of the fastest on earth, is vital and, to those who appreciate the craft of going fast, it is one of the very best.
These traits are shared by Leogang’s World Cup track more than any other on the as circuit. It wasn’t so long ago that the place was written off as ‘too easy’, ‘too bike park’. Now though, thanks to some deft changes from the organiser and the gradual increase of pace at the front of the field, Leogang is recognised as the temple of speed it has always been.
There is no single section that hides vast reserves of time – they all matter. In this instance, ‘all’ does not refer to sectors, Splits or lines, it refers to inches, if not millimetres. Watch the top-ten elite men through the root section out in the open and each of them rattles the same course pole with their left-hand pedal. Leogang is where the truly fast come to do battle and it was home to a suitably thrilling mid-season World Cup race in 2019.
Vali Höll, cleaned and reset from her Fort William defeat, was at her home event. Any Austrian will tell you that to race downhill (in any sport) in Austria as an Austrian is a massive deal; for Höll this was literally her home race. Leogang is the slope on which she grew up and honed her skills and sharpened her knives. The result was almost as predictable as it was brutal – an eighteen-second margin of victory. Anna Newkirk and Mille Johnset were separated by just a second behind Höll, but the rider in white had seldom looked so impressive. In the end, her time of 3:49.363 would have been comfortably good enough for third in elites.
In the junior men’s race, it was the (next) great French hope, Thibaut Daprela, who took yet another win. As a boy, Thibaut’s father was a personal sponsor of the great Nicolas Vouilloz. Daprela Junior rode with one of the most calculated and consistent riders of all time regularly and learnt at the foot of the master. Tall and clad in the skin-tight race gear of that other pillar of Gallic consistency, Max Commencal, Thibaut looked like the real deal. Australia’s Kye A’Hern was second and France’s Matteo Iniguez third.
Leogang has hosted some thrillers over the years. Rachel Atherton has historically held sway over proceedings in this particular corner of Austria with three wins out of the last four races here. Only Tahnée Seagrave’s historic debut victory in 2017 blots her elite women’s scorecard.
A blue-sky afternoon beat down on the dusty Leogang finish bowl. Kate Weatherly set the women’s benchmark with a 3:51.467. The first rider to beat her was the privateer and break-through act of 2019, Nina Hoffman. The German sent the finish line jump as far as anyone and crossed the line 6.925 seconds faster than the Kiwi. The widely-predicted drama arrived soon after. As Hoffman celebrated and mounted the hot-seat, she momentarily turned her back to the big screen. As she did so, Kate Weatherly saw something on it which caused her to puff out her cheeks. The World Champion, Rachel Atherton, had appeared into vision, fresh from the top section, with dust on her elbow.
Somewhere off-camera that rarest of rarities had unfolded – a Rachel Atherton race run mistake had put the World Champion on the deck. Atherton’s run of Leogang luck was over and she would end the day 15th. Tracey Hannah, the fastest qualifier at every Mercedes-Benz UCl World Cup so far in 2019, left the start hut last. The Leogang track suits the Hannah family (brother Mik of course also races) nicely – its raw, retina-blurring speed allowing the siblings from Queensland the perfect stage on which to channel their Aussie grit. Tracey was pushing hard. Course poles were sent recoiling back and forth and pedal strokes were grabbed in places previously reserved for recuperation. A second was gleaned at split one, then doubled by split two. Half a second was lost at the half-way point but a full second was recouped by the finish line. Tracey Hannah had won in Leogang.
Crucially, perhaps even more so than the win, Tracey collected the points leader’s jersey in the process. The speed had been there all season and now it was backed up with the championship lead. When interviewed later in the year, Hannah would admit that it was when she pulled the jersey on here that she started to believe; it would turn out to be one of 2019’s key moments.
‘Bruni is flying here!’ The announcer’s words rang out across the rapidly-filling finish bowl. He wasn’t wrong. Loic Bruni, third in the world, arrived in Leogang stiff and sore after his horror crash at Fort William just eight days previously. That crash had shaken him, but he had dealt with it impressively, putting it to the back of his mind to finish eighth that day in front of a roaring British crowd that had adopted him as one of their own. Now, during his race run in Leogang, he was up by 1.5 seconds on Charlie Harrison. The post-impact Bruni had looked uncharacteristically rigid in Fort William, his movements around the bike just not quite as well-oiled and fluid as usual. Now, though, he was back on his game: millimetre-perfect everywhere, hardly so much as a puff of displaced earth from his rear wheel. No drama, no hesitation, just speed.
By the double-curved wall rides that signals split three, Bruni was 2.5 seconds up. By the fourth it was out to 3.2 seconds, which he would hold to the line. In the commentary booth, Rob Warner cracked out his trademark wail, ‘look at the time!’ – a sure-fire denotation to long-term fans of the sport that he thought Bruni may well have done enough to win it. But the Frenchman wasn’t convinced. He shrugged his shoulders and calmly dismissed what for all the world had looked like a race-winning run as ‘not enough’.
Aaron Gwin, the former miracle man of Leogang, could do nothing about Bruni’s time. Nor could Danny Hart. Bruni was poker-faced — he’d put an average of two seconds into two of the world’s very best, maybe he could start to believe?
It’s impossible to say what lightning bolts fire across the synapses buried deep beneath those dark black brows, but Amaury Pierron will certainly have registered high on Bruni’s internal threat scale. His compatriot sent a couple of buckets of earth flying on the very first corner and it seemed clear that the ‘overboost’ switch which so often sees the Commencal-Vallnord rider slingshot into warp speed remained unflicked. A knee injury suffered earlier in the week had nobbled the reigning World Cup title holder and would no doubt have contributed to a time of 3:18.6, which was good enough for fourth but not what he would have wanted.
Troy Brosnan, the ever-consistent Aussie in the points leader’s jersey for only the second time in his career, had finished in the top-four every year in Leogang since 2014. Despite being down at the first few splits, he had hauled Bruni within just a couple of tenths by the halfway point, but his run moved away from him; he crossed the line seven-tenths down, in second. Loris Vergier slid out of a slow berm while almost within touching distance of the finish line and, just like that, there was only one rider left at the top – Greg Minnaar.
Halfway through the big South African’s run, Bruni’s face recoiled. He had been up until then and studiously chewing the ends of his gloves, but when the third split came in at just 0.7 seconds slower than his own, there was genuine concern. The poker face slipped. As Minnaar hurtled towards the tree stump at the top of the final section of steps before the big push to the line, he was within two tenths. But then it was gone. Somewhere possibly imperceptible to all but those who were sat on those two bikes, Minnaar lost half a second and was back in second. Loic Bruni had won his second World Cup of the year, Minnaar was second and Brosnan was third.
That win meant that Bruni was now just five points shy of Brosnan’s overall points lead as they left Austria. It was now difficult to tell who the advantage lay with. Once again, Leogang had served up a classic full of intrigue. Time remained fickle, Brosnan remained in the lead but those around him grew with confidence. The series would head to Andorra in search of answers once again.
By Ric McLaughlin, journalist, commentator and Japanese car lover.
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