6 things we learned from the Snowshoe DH World Cup

Two names that continue to stand out in junior racing are Canadians Jackson Goldstone and Gracey Hemstreet. Both riders have been dominating the junior field with Snowshoe giving them both four wins in 2022.

For Jackson, this was his third win in a row. With his string of wins, he now has a sixty-point lead over Jordan Williams overall, which means we could see the overall title locked down in Mont-Sainte-Anne, a very special achievement if Jackson can pull it off.

Gracey Hemstreet could also close out the overall in Canada, as she is currently 40 points clear. Gracey will have to fight a little harder to take the series title at her home race, but with four wins, a second and a third, she has the chops to do it.

Like her previous performances on the muddy slopes of Leogang, Camille Balanche once again proved that she is in a league of her own in the mud. Not only did she make the tricky track look easy, but she also apparently didn’t crash all weekend. With a track that eliminated or at least stopped most of the riders in their final races, Camille was able to put together an almost entirely clean run with her feet up to win by a considerable four seconds against Myriam Nicole.

Camille’s victory in Snowshoe supports an incredible five consecutive wins in qualifying with three wins in 2022. These incredible results put Camille with 230 points in the lead overall; if she can win another qualification and Myriam Nicole qualifies in third place, the overall for 2022 will be tied before the finals even start.

Snowshoe not only provided excellent racing, but also brought what is probably the best weekend ever for Continental tires with three Elite men on the podium and a second place finish in the Junior women’s race for Aimi Kenyon.

While we normally see podiums dominated by the likes of Schwalbe and Maxxis, it was interesting to see how the German brand’s new tires handled so well in the mud. With the big Continental weekend, we saw top race results from Bernard Kerr, Andreas Kolb and Ronan Dunne.

The elite men’s race was one of the wildest of the year, with a fine line between a possible winning race and a disaster. As we have learned this season, Amaury Pierron is the master of riding on this rim and overcame the dry track to take his fourth win this season. With this feat, Amaury also becomes the fourth Elite man to win four World Cups in a single year, with Mont-Sainte-Anne and Val di Sole yet to come, we’d say he could be bettering this record.

Looking at Amaury’s career times, he only took the lead in the final splits with a second split finish of 12 and the third split came in fifth. Both stages were sections with some of the worst conditions with Amaury setting blistering times on the safer upper and lower stages. Looking at the top four riders, his final standings were reached in the fourth division with no changes to the line.

So far we’ve only seen dry and dusty World Cup races on snowshoes and a lot of people say it was lucky the track wasn’t wet. Finally, after three previous races at this location, we got to see just how tricky the course can be. You know a World Cup course is tough when even the top qualifiers are being pushed all over the track and even setting foot on the ground isn’t the end of a potential winning run.

The rough conditions brought up some interesting line options with Dakotah Norton riding a wild line through the double drop that looked insanely fast, and we don’t think anyone else has attempted the line all week.

While it’s great to have World Cup races not just in Europe, it’s hard to beat the distinct lack of riders who attended last weekend’s World Cup race. Across all categories, we saw decent to significant drops in numbers. The junior women dropped two riders from the previous lowest numbers and the junior men were seven short. In the elite women’s races, the numbers dropped below 30 for the first time this year with just 20 riders on the start list. Elite men also dipped below 100 for the first time in 2022 with 93 riders, that’s 54 riders below the previous lowest number.

With news that next year we may see just 30 riders in the final and an even more international racing schedule, it’s hard to see how it will pay off for riders with a clear gap in the number of riders able to compete up north. . America.