On Thursday 5 July the best MTB performers started to warm up the engines waiting for the main races scheduled between Friday 6 and Sunday 8 July on the occasion of the Mercedes-Benz UCI MTB World Cup 2018. This year there are over 650 athletes from 44 nations represented to take part in the first round of the season that brings together the main mountain bike specialties: cross country, in the double declination XCC and XCO, and downhill.
The Cross Country athletes have become familiar with the renewed race ring - 4.2 km long with 150 m of positive difference in height - in the afternoon with two separate sessions: first the women from 2.00 pm to 3.00 pm, then all the riders from 15:00 to 16:00, finally from 16:00 to 17:00 only men.
The strongest specialists in the world of this spectacular discipline started with the official warm-up from 18:00 to 20:15, followed by the single timed runs starting at 20:30, using the perfect artificial lighting of the suggestive path , located in the natural amphitheater next to the final stretch of the downhill track. The round has decreed the scoreboard - 8 women and 32 men - for the races of Friday 6 July when, from 21:15 it will arrive at the two four-finals that will declare the World Champions 4X Men and Women 2018. In the women's field all the favorites qualified, starting from the Czech Romana Labounkova, author of the best time (50 "732), always at the top of the discipline in recent years (second at the World 4X in 2017). Among the possible outsiders we find the British Natasha Bradley, second at 3 "246, and the German Franziska Meyer, fifth at 5" 426.
In the men's field dominated the very strong Czech Tomas Slavik who, with a time trial of 44 "397, showed he wanted to redo the disappointment of 2017 when he did not qualify because of a fall. A 1 "088 follows the other favorite, the French Quentin Derbier, silver last year. The world champion 2017, the Swede Felix Beckeman, scored the fourth time at 1 "393.
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