Loana Lecomte (Canyon CLLCTV) secured a solo victory in the second round of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in Lenzerheide. The French rider beat Anne Terpstra (Ghost Factory Racing) by 18 seconds, while Alessandra Keller (Thömus Maxon) was third on the day at 32 seconds back.
"To be honest, I don't know how I did it today. In the last few weeks, I have had a lot of questions, and it was hard for me. After the short track, I had a lot of bad feelings, but Jolanda Neff helped me with this a lot," Lecomte said.
"Today, I just wanted to have fun on my bike, and I won the race, I can't believe it.
"The biggest goal of the year for me is World Championships, so my training is geared towards that. We'll continue to work on this. Hopefully, in the next few weeks, I will be in the same shape or better."
Lecomte crossed the finish line first to beat Terpstra and Keller, who both managed to pass World Champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Ineos Grenadiers) near the end of the race for the final podium places. The overall series leader Puck Pieterse (Alpecin-Deceuninck) finished in fifth.
"The whole race went so quick. When you're racing in a group, it's so different from when you're riding alone, there's so much going on. I definitely had fun, and I prefer races like this when it's hectic. I really enjoyed it," runner-up Terpstra said.
"I didn't really try to find anything extra on the last lap. I tried to recover where I could and stay as close as possible to the rider in front of me. I didn't expect to overtake Pauline on that climb, but I think she was having a hard time. It was a long way to the finish from that point, and I was struggling for sure."
Pieterse now leads the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup with 466 points, Lecomte is in second with 457 points, and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Ineos Grenadiers) is in third with 440 points.
The series continues at Saalfelden, Leogang in Austria, with the formats of Cross-country, Downhill and Enduro from June 15-18.
Results
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