Hello,

The second rounds of 2024 enduro (EDR) and downhill (DH) World Cup racing take place this weekend at an all-new venue in Bielsko-Biała, Poland, with the EDR today, Friday 17 May (live timing on our site here).

We’ve prepared a few helpful (hopefully) notes below and we’ll be back after the racing with full roundups for both events.

As always, top-notch photos by Sven and Boris. Hope you enjoy flicking through.

Cheers,

James
+ the Misspent Summers team

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK: ENDURO YEARBOOK ’23

WHERE THE LOAM’S AT: Brief pre-notes from Bielsko-Biała EDR and DH World Cup R2

• Venue overview: EDR and DH are in two separate venues about 25 minutes’ drive apart. Bielsko-Biała is the main city and is surrounded by the Beskidy Mountains, with loads of quality riding in the Enduro Trails area, where the enduro race is taking place. The downhill is in a ski station, Szczyrk Mountain Resort. There’s a vibrant local mountain bike community and this event has been years in the making
• Schedule: EDR racing is today, Friday 17 May. E-EDR racing is Saturday 18 May. DH elite and junior qualifying and semi-finals are on Saturday 18 and finals on Sunday 19 May. Full schedule here
• Where to watch DH:junior and elite finals will be broadcast live on YouTube (juniors) and Eurosport/Max/other on Sunday 19 May. Find out where you can watch the racing on the MTB World Series site. Semi-finals, which were new last year and were free to watch online, are not being broadcast anywhere
• Where to watch EDR: follow the live timing on our website here. The full race (EDR and E-EDR) recap video will be out on Sunday 19 May on YouTube and the following Thursday on Eurosport
• Results: all EDR and E-EDR results will be posted here as they come in. Downhill results will be posted here
• Armchair racing: don’t forget Race Companion has enduro and downhill fantasy leagues
• Weather check: after a long dry spell, rain is due from Friday afternoon and continuing through the weekend with added storms
• Press conference: watch the full pre-race conference with Harnden, Lukasik, Höll, Brosnan and Moseley here
• Tip: use right earphone/speaker only to reduce the press conference echo
• Keen eyes: pore through the details – but not the ones that are missing (e.g. ‘4.8 – venue map’) or ‘coming soon’ – in the official EDR and DH race book here
• ‘Duro stats: the EDR comprises five stages with about 1,500m climbing and a touch over 2,000m descending (there’s one chairlift ride during the day)
• Squid vid: check out our EDR course preview – with Sven’s trademark heckling – here. Crashes, sends, skids. Looks like a lot of fun
• If it isn’t said: with little information on what you could and couldn’t do in enduro practice, so some people took the chairlift once and pedalled the rest (as they’ll do during the race) and others took the lift several times
• Red flags at dawn: when the downhill course opened for practice on Friday morning, there was almost immediately a red flag (to signal no riding allowed) after a junior rider crashed out in the top section of the course and a medic was called in from elsewhere. Camille Balanche also went over the top of a berm but came out relatively unscathed
• DH WC recap: check out our full notes from Fort William World Cup for a refresher on everything that went down at round one of the DH WC
• Audio: listen to Archie’s soothing voice and a bunch of top rider interviews by Sven in our Long ‘Views podcast from Fort William here, including Loic Bruni, Vali Höll and more
• Note to editors: if you are enjoying our notes emails and would like to use anything from them, please get in touch or cite us in your articles 🙂
• EDR WC recap: click here for our notes, photos and tangents from Finale Ligure’s enduro World Cup last weekend
• Audio: full Long ‘Views episode from Finale here, including interviews with Richie Rude, Hattie Harnden and more
• EDR course overview: riders generally loved the enduro stages during practice. The tracks are mostly fast, relatively flat and peppered with protruding rocks; carrying speed, pumping and thinking ahead will be critical. Times are likely to be tight as there are few big features to separate riders
• Word: info
• DH course overview: freshly built for this race, the downhill track has countless jumps (well, riders have counted 32 or 36 depending who you ask – presumably due to differences in what they call a jump, not just Misspent Summers-level bad maths). After the first two runs of practice on Friday, the total loamer had already started chopping up; by the end of practice, it’s likely to be almost unrecognisable. But most riders love it, are glad for a new track and excited to see it turn into ruts, holes and multiple lines by race day
• Finals to Finale: Connor Fearon and Martin Maes were the only elite riders who made it into finals in Fort William DH then raced in the Finale Ligure EDR the following weekend. Fearon scored 22^nd in Fort William and DNF (did not finish) in Finale; Maes finished 21^st and 3^rd
• Double-double-whammy: Hugo Pigeon raced both the EDR (15^th place) and E-EDR (8^th) in Finale. We’re pretty sure he was the only person enduro enough to race both. Pigeon is signed up for both races this week too
• Thanks: big thank you to Sven, Boris and Seb for their work on our yearbook photography, to all our note-takers on the ground in Poland, and to you for reading. If you like what we do, we’d greatly appreciate any help through purchases on our store. Thank you and stay tuned for our post-race EDR and DH notes coming soon!