Hi there,

Last weekend’s Combloux Enduro World Cup (EDR) was a loamy blast through the forests of France’s Haute-Savoie region; it was a rider’s course packed with turns, tech and tree roots.

Read on for our notes and a selection of photos by Misspent Summers yearbook photographer Sven Martin.

We’re now in Les Gets for this week’s downhill and cross-country World Cups and we’ve got our pop-up store, photo exhibition and hangout open daily from early to late at 449 Rue du Centre (the main street). Hope to see you there if you’re in town.

Cheers,

James

+the Misspent Summers team

PRODUCT: SPENT 2

 

ROOTSY: Notes from a loamer at Combloux, France, EDR Enduro World Cup R4 2024 

• Precursor: read our pre-race notes here
• Results: Elite men: Richie Rude (25:33.390) 2. Luke Meier-Smith (+2.199) 3. Alex Rudeau (+3.230) | Elite women: 1. Morgane Charre (29:17.262) 2. Isabeau Courdurier (+23.140) 3. Ella Conolly (+25.832) | U21 men: 1. Adam Maxa (26:44.975) 2. Jt Fisher (+14.612) 3. Bailey Christie (+17.605) | U21 women: 1. Winni Goldsbury (32:21.743) 2. Simona Kuchynkova (+50.765) 3. Lily Boucher (+1:19.748) FULL RESULTS
• Word: finesse
• Painavision: watch the official highlights and bonus raw footage here. Great to see the raw footage out soon after the race finished – some amazing drone shots through the trees and it gives you a good idea just how rooty and rough the trails were
• Vibe: there weren’t thousands of spectators about, but the stages were exciting to watch and there was a nice, relaxed vibe at the finish line. Team pits were well organised but a bit far up the hill for
• The real race: check who’s leading the Race Companion fantasy enduro league after four rounds here
• Scoring penalties: if you scroll to the bottom of the results sheets, you’ll find a list of time penalties doled out to riders who didn’t make it to the start of a stage or stages at their allotted start time. With a tight turnaround between stages, most people (eight elite men and four elite women) were penalised on stage three. You might note that some people got a one-minute penalty, others a five-minute penalty. Why’s that? If you get to the stage start late by up to five minutes, you get a one-minute penalty; more than five late and you get a five-minute penalty
• Self-promotion: if you like what we do, please have a browse on our store. Every purchase helps keep our wheels turning

Continued below…

• Story of the race: scorching temperatures and short transfer times between stages led to a lot of zombie-looking racers, but nearly everyone praised the tracks – who wouldn’t like flat-out fast forest loamers? The odd, well, odd bit of course marking was the only gripe and a few riders were caught out in practice by sudden changes of direction. Elite men’s racing was tight as ever, with Rude taking the win by just two seconds from Meier-Smith. Despite his dominance so far this year, surprisingly Rude didn’t win any stages; Rudeau took the most stage wins with three. Meanwhile in the elite women’s, Charre dominated the day with her five stage wins; she nursed a deflating tyre down the final stage (Harriet Harnden won stage six) but still won the race by more than 20 seconds. She did this company proud (she’s the real boss)! Courdurier held it together for second after banging up her bike on one of the stages and Conolly rode another blistering race to finish third
• Full enduro: Winni Goldsbury has now won two U21 women’s EDR races in a row, but the Kiwi also wins two enduro awards for battling through mechanicals and red flags on the way to her first win in Leogang and this weekend stopping mid-stage one for an unconscious rider (who was OKish in the end) and still going on to win the race. Louis Jeandel gets a notable mention – he had a broken scaphoid put back together three weeks ago but still managed 14^th in elite men
• Fast day out: following the trend from round one in Finale (read our notes from that race here), the transfer times between Combloux’s six stages were so tight that even many of the world’s fastest, fittest racers looked flustered as they sprinted between stages. (On a tangent, we did some really bad maths (RBM) after Finale and worked out that the allocated time from the start of stage one to the final check in divided by the officially stated distance equalled about a 7km/h average speed – but extra liaison time was added in during race day)
• Quote: ‘I got lost’
• Standings: after four of six rounds, Rude leads the elite men’s standings with 1,837 points and three race wins to his name. He’s chased by Sławomir Łukasik in second with 1,450 points and Charlie Murray third with 1,443. Courdurier and Harriet Harnden retain first and second in the series standings with 1,844 and 1,693 points respectively. After her race win and five stage wins here, Charre moves from fourth into third with 1,524 points. Fisher leads the U21 men’s standings and Kuchynkova is out front in the U21 women’s FULL STANDINGS

More below…

 

• Grip tech: with ground conditions varying from greasy ruts to loamy roots, tyres were as important as ever. Rude won elite men’s on Maxxis *******, while Charre won elite women’s on Continental Argotals
• AltDH: Luke Meier-Smith won the downhiller-goes-enduroing race with his second place finish, while Brook Macdonald went enduro for the first time since Whistler in 2016 and said he loved all the stages bar one and hated all the liaisons bar none; he was happy with his 56^th-place finish and the overall experience
• On a downhill-related tangent, the Enduro Rule Book states that ‘As a guideline for course designers, Special Stages should aim to contain an absolute maximum of 10% climbing and at least 90% descending. (Example: 2 vertical metres ascent for every 20 vertical metres descent)’ – not sure who’s checking
• Factual survey: using precision eye-based measurements, we determined silver rims to be faster through a 50-metre section of rooty ruts. Zakarias Johansen had the fastest of all the silver rims
• Chat: Troy Lee (as in, the man, the myth, the legend behind Troy Lee Designs) was trackside watching the EDR racing, and his son was racing the Open EDR. Great to see names like TL so invested in the sport and enjoying the action
• E-EDR: Sunday’s e-bike race saw 32 men and 8 women finish the 10 rain-doused stages, with Antoine Rogge taking his first E-EDR win and Estelle Charles winning in her first-ever E-EDR race – Flo Espiñeira has won every other elite women’s E-EDR this year and finished second here (Charles and Espiñeira both raced the EDR on Friday too, finishing eight and thirteenth)
• Our view: Combloux EDR’s trails were unexpectedly awesome, and for anyone who could find the event and stages it was great to watch too. A few signposts and an online spectator map could make it a great future venue for a vibey enduro event
• Pop down to the pop up: come and see us all this week at 449 Rue du Centre, Les Gets, where we’ve got a pop-up store and photo exhibition supported by Santa Cruz Bicycles and Fox Racing, evening hangouts with beer from Outer Range Brewing and early morning coffees from Satellite Coffee courtesy of the event sponsors. Hope to see you here!
• Big thank you for reading and to Boris, Seb and Sven for all the hard work chasing riders around the World Cups, documenting this brilliant sport so we can record its history in our books