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The third Round of the 2021 UCI Downhill MTB World Cup season took place in Maribor, Slovenia. A fairly new, fast and dry track, with a stack of line options for riders to choose from, provided an exciting and close battle between riders.
In the Men’s Race Benoit Coulanges was one of the first riders to post a time that looked good enough for the podium and sat on the hot seat for quite some time, but it wasn’t until Loïc Bruni that Coulanges’s time was beaten. Danny Hart, Matt Walker and more were in touch through the first half of the track, but slipped down the standings during the lower sections.
Greg Minnaar
Greg Minnaar, on the other hand, was showing red splits early on, but gradually clawing back tenths to finally go fastest by a nail-biting 0.092 seconds. Laurie Greenland pulled a similar trick, knocking Minnaar off the hot seat by just 0.082sec. Thibaut Dapréla was quickest through Split 1 and built his lead all the way down, crossing the line 1.085sec ahead of Greenland. Loris Vergier was the last man down the hill, he floated his way toward a 1.138 second advantage by Split 4 and a winning margin of 1.775 to secure a perfect World Cup weekend.
Loris Vergier
In the Women’s Race Tahnée Seagrave was the first of the big names down the hill and she turned the splits green the whole way down to unseat Mille Johnset. Monika Hrastnik pulled back a 2.164 deficit at Split 1 to go fastest by an insanely close margin of 0.004 seconds. World Champion Camille Balanche’s finals run was not quite on-point and she lost a lot of time in the final third, ultimately slotting her into 3rd place.
Myriam Nicole
Eleonora Farina kept the green splits rolling during her run as she went fastest by 3.171 seconds. Myriam Nicole was already almost three seconds up by split two, and although she lost some time lower down the track, she crossed the line to go fastest with one rider to go. After qualifying fastest, Vali Höll could not find the speed in her finals run, finishing down in 6th.
Men’s results
1st Loris Vergier 3:05.064
2nd Thibaut Daprela 3:06.819
3rd Laurie Greenland 3:07.904
4th Greg Minnaar 3:07.986
5th Loic Bruni 3:08.078
6th Benoit Coulanges 3:08.455
7th Luca Shaw 3:08.799
8th Danny Hart 3:09.081
9th Angel Alonso Suarez 3:09.814
10th Dan Slack 3:10.502
Women’s results
1st Myriam Nicole 3:35.909
2nd Eleonora Farina 3:37.231
3rd Camille Balanche 3:39.103
4th Monika Hrastnik 3:40.402
5th Tahnee Seagrave 3:40.406
6th Vali Holl 3:41.331
7th Mille Johnset 3:42.133
8th Jessica Blewitt 3:44.001
9th Veronika Widmann 3:46.365
10th Marine Cabirou 3:47.066
Photos by Bartek Wolinski / Red Bull Content Pool.
