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Sabrina Jonnier clocks up another win at Maribor WC

Sabrina Jonnier narrowly took the victory at today’s 5th round of the Maribor DH World Cup 2009. She had a fast, clean run which stood up to fastest qualifier Emmeline Ragot’s time by just 0.31 of a second. That’s pretty frustrating for Emmeline who has still never won a World Cup round, but her second place today bumps her up to number 2 in the overall ranking, ahead of Tracy Moseley who finished well back in 9th.

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Third place went to new European Champ Floriane Pugin, who headed down the hill early and spent a very long time in the hot seat waiting for her fellow fast French riders to try to beat her time. Celine Gros came close but had to settle for 4th, and Japanese rider Mio Suemasa made it onto the podium in fifth.

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There aren’t many junior women racing at this level this year, but bothn Emma Atkinson from the UK and French rider Fanny Lombard made it through to the final, with Fanny narrowly beating her British rival. Emma had an off in the rockgarden when she encountered Brigit Braumann walking her broken bike and then crashed into a tree, so she definitely lost some time there!

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Thanks to extreme weather yesterday, the qualifying was delayed until race day, so it was a condensed format with practice starting at a painfully early 7.15, quals at 9.30 and racing at 1.15. Although it didn’t rain today, the women riders were still sliding around in their qualifying runs. Worst affected was Tracy Moseley who lost well over a minute from not one but three crashes (including stopping to check if her ankle was broken, and then colliding with French rider Myriam Nicole) and qualified way back in the field. However, due to her overall rank she started mid-pack for the race run.  She still had a terrible run though, hopefully T-Mo will be back on form at the next round.  The Trek team manager  Martin Whiteley told Freecaster.tv that Tracy’s physically in top shape and that he’s been pushing her to ride hard and crash rather than finish conservatively, in a high-risk strategy to get the leader jersey back. Sounds like a lot of pressure…

The riders have a month to recover until the next World Cup race at Mt Ste Anne, Canada.

Results from the UCI:

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