Schurter wins Mont-Sainte-Anne World Cup

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Nino Schurter (Scott-Odlo) won a closely fought battle against arch rival Julien Absalon (BMC) to take his second cross country World Cup victory of the season on Sunday at Mont-Sainte-Anne in Quebec, Canada.

Mont-Sainte-Anne is always one of the hardest courses on the World Cup circuit; a true classic with steep climbs and rocky, rooty descents. Add in mud from heavy rain the night before and hot, humid conditions on race day, and this became a race of attrition.

The men's race, as expected, became a duel between the two preeminent men on the circuit - Schurter and Absalon. Between the two riders, they have won all five rounds of the World Cup thus far, with Absalon holding an advantage by one win.

World champion Schurter attacked after the start loop and had a 15-second lead after the first lap over a chase group containing Absalon. However, the French rider bridged across on the second lap and the pair rode away from the rest of the field to battle it out for the win. Each tested the other on the steep climbs and technical descents, but it wasn't until the penultimate lap that Schurter finally got a gap. Even then, there was no time to back off because the gap never went over 18 seconds, and was 16 seconds at the line.

Dan McConnell (Trek Factory Racing), after a slow start, steadily worked his way up through the field to move into third with one lap to go and held it to the finish, with Lukas Fluckiger (BMC) taking fourth and brother Mathias Fluckiger (Stockli) fifth.

"It was a super tough race," said Schurter. "It's a really hard course here with the changes they made for this year, with super hard climbing. It's really exciting to win here in Mont-Sainte-Anne."

"I had quite a crash; I nearly took down Absalon, I'm sorry about that! The past years I've had a lot of bad luck here; at the world championships [in 2010] I flatted twice, so I feel really lucky to win here. It's an awesome feeling and always nice to do well here. I missed one round, so it's going to be tough to catch up in the standings, but you never know - it's still two races to go and I will fight until the last race."

Absalon leads Schurter by 260 points with two races to go, which makes it virtually impossible for the Swiss rider to catch him. McConnell remains in third, a further 140 points back.

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