Emmeline Ragot wins World Champs 2009

It’s been an mind-blowing couple of hours here in Canberra, and Emmeline Ragot is the 2009 World Champion by 2.49 seconds. It was an incredible win for the French rider, who still has a broken ankle and has had so many second placings at this year’s World Cup. Kathy Pruittheld the hot seat from early on, and was only unseated by Emmeline, the third-to-last rider down. Tracy Moseley came down with a clean run, no mistakes, but just not as fast as Emmeline. The crowd held their breaths as the last rider,world cup leader Sabrina Jonnier came down the track. There was a huge ‘Oooooh’ across the mountain as Sabrina crashed in a berm, and took a long time to get up… She must have known she had lost, the margins are so tight on this short track. At the hot-seat Nissan truck, Emmeline had missed seeing the crash on the big screen, but her fellow riders started yelling to her that she was World Champ. It wasn’t offiicial until the clock ticked past Emmeline’s time without Sabrina crossing the line…And then she knew it was for real. Emmeline waited for Sabrina to finish to congratulate her before a big wave to the crowd and a lot of hugging began.

 

 

There’s a huge media scrum outside at this moment, and loads of friends and other riders congratulating the new Champ on the best performance of her career. Emmeline said on the hotseat “My run was ok, I made a lot of mistakes, I was so loose. And I pedal so hard for the finish.” It certainly paid off! If you haven’t seen it, we made a video about her summer in New Zealand and interviewed her about her 2009 season where she talks about how frustrating it is to finish second so many times. Well, there’s no better race to come first in than this.

Fionn Griffiths and Claire Buchar who were fast in practice were both unhappy with their runs, with Claire sliding out in a corner to finish 6th, with Fionn fourth. Young French rider Floriane Pugin was fifth fastest. Claire Whitemanwas the fastest Australian here in front of her home crowd, and finished in fifteenth, just ahead of fastest Kiwi  Harriet Harper.

This morning was pretty tense, with many riders still trying to perfect the triple-triple in the lower section of the course.  Sabrina Jonnier, Micayla Gatto and Fionn Griffiths were all sessioning that section just to get it completely perfect. For one rider it didn’t go so well – Aussie Sarah Booth got taken out by a flying Frenchman who ran into the back of her at the end of the jumps as he was tripling it and she was doubling it. It was a horrific crash, but Sarah got up, sorted her Kona out herself, and raced. Just another example of some of the amazing courage and toughness that’s been on display here at Worlds.

If you were watching on Freecaster, you’d have heard Anneke Beerten (who is still disappointed about the UCI’s decision in her 4x semi – we interveiwed her about it and it will go up soon). She’s one of six elite international riders who ordered Martha Hucker tees in our first (and kinda low-key) print run, and she was pretty stoked with it:

 

Results should be up here soon, and now we’re all off to celebrate!! HELL YEAH! It’s been an awesome week here, there will be videos up soon of the women’s 4x and DH once they’ve been edited together, and there’s loads from this final – Martha Hucker writer Rita Langley was right in the high-five spot by the hotseat filming stuff. And getting totally totally stoked! What an amazing race! GO EMMELINE!!!

 

Older: Tracy Moseley fastest in Canberra timed practice

Fresher: Martha Hucker’s World Champs 4x videos

Published on 06/09/2009 by Martha Hucker.

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