World and Olympic champion Nino Schurter (Scott-SRAM) continues to dominate men's field at the Mountain Bike World Cup, taking his third consecutive victory of the season at Round 3 in Vallnord, Andorra, on Sunday.
Vallnord, in the Principality of Andorra, in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, has hosted multiple World Cups and the world championships in 2015. The course features steep climbs and technical descents, but the key difficulty for most riders is the altitude; racing at 1900 to 2000 metres, too hard an effort puts a rider into oxygen debt and they will pay for that later in the race.
Defending World Cup overall champion Julien Absalon (BMC) was missing from the start line after breaking his collarbone in a training crash. However, this race was owned Schurter, who holds a perfect win record this season. Schurter powered away from the rest of the field on the first lap of the seven lap race and had opened almost a minute lead within a lap. He easily held this gap until the final lap, when he backed off to cruise in to victory, his 23rd World Cup win.
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"I'm super happy," said Schurter. "I love this course; it's super technical and I really feel home here. I had an awesome start and was at the front from the beginning. Here at altitude it's really important to pace your race, and when I had the gap I was able to do my own race. It was a perfect race for me. With three World Cup wins it is already an amazing season, and I just hope it can get better and better."
Behind, an initial chase group of ten was gradually whittled down through attrition - with the exception of Number-2 ranked David Valero (MMR Factory) who flatted while leading the chase. Eventually the chase came down to three riders - Mathias Flueckiger (Radon Factory), Jordan Sarrou (BH SR Suntour KMC) and Sam Gaze (Specialized). Gaze was dropped on the last lap when the other two began attacking, and Flueckiger outsprinted Sarrou for second.
Schurter now has a perfect score of 750 points, and is close to uncatchable in the standings. Valero, despite his flat and finishing 22nd, remains in second with 412 points, just two points in front of Maxime Marotte (Cannondale Factory).
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