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Round 3 of the 2023 UCI Downhill MTB World Cup season took place over the weekend in Val di Sole, Italy. Valentina Höll and Jackson Goldstone delivered dominant finals runs on the technical and demanding track to win the Elite Women’s and Elite Men’s races respectively.
Jackson Goldstone
Vali Holl
The Elite Men’s final was a thrilling race that was made all the more difficult by a mid-afternoon rain shower that turned large parts of the course very slippery for the mid portion of the racers. Jackson Goldstone finished 4th in the semi-finals and then, as the course began to rapidly dry out for the final 15 riders, delivered a brilliant finals run that saw him go faster and faster through each split to register a time of 3:34.926 and beat the previous fastest time of Thibaut Daprella by 2.440s.
With just three riders left to go, Finn Iles got closest to beating Goldstone’s time, finishing 2.224s behind his countryman, and when Jordan Williams crashed out and semi-final winner Loris Vergier could only post the fifth fastest time, Goldstone’s maiden Elite win was confirmed.
In the Elite Women’s race Vali Holl was on unbeatable form again, showing her technical prowess and strength to win the semi-finals by over 3.5s over Camille Balanche, and backed up her dominant form in the final.
As the final six riders on the hill began their runs, it was Marine Cabirou who set the first serious time to beat, crossing the line in 4:12.445. Nina Hoffmann failed to beat Cabirou’s time, but Jess Blewitt bettered it by almost a quarter of a second, only for her time to be beaten by Balanche by almost two seconds with only Höll left to go.
On a different level to her rivals on track Höll was fastest through every single time split as she crossed the finish line in 4:07.440 to beat Balanche by a big margin of 2.9s, while Blewitt took 3rd, 4.770s behind Höll.
Men’s Results (Top 10)
1st Jackson Goldstone 3:34.926
2nd Finn Iles 3:37.150
3rd Thibaut Daprela 3:37.366
4th Troy Brosnan 3:38.797
5th Loris Vergier 3:39.121
6th Andreas Kolb 3:39.311
7th Bernard Kerr 3:40.945
8th Benoit Coulanges 3:42.337
9th Danny Hart 3:42.685
10th Remy Meier-Smith 3:41.984
Women’s Results (Top 10)
1st Vali Höll 4:07.440
2nd Camille Balanche 4:10.353
3rd Jess Blewitt 4:12.210
4th Marine Cabirou 4:12.445
5th Nina Hoffmann 4:12.689
6th Monika Hrastnik 4:14.002
7th Grasey Hemstreet 4:14.641
8th Lisa Baumann 4:21.465
9th Veronika Widmann 4:24.109
10th Sian A’Hern 4:27.745
Photos by Karolina Krasinka / Red Bull Content Pool.
