Titouan Carod (BMC MTB) took the cross-country win at the Mountain Bike World Cup in Val di Sole on Sunday while Nino Schurter (Scott-SRAM) came over the line second in Italy, to secure an eighth overall series victory.
Carod took off along out the front early in the race and Schurter was on the chase with Luca Braidot (Santa Cruz FSA MTB), Jordan Sarrou (Specialized) and Alan Hatherly (Cannondale Factory Racing).
By lap 3, Carod had dropped the other two riders and was riding solo at the front of the race. Schurter steadily worked his way up to the two chasers, with the three working together but still losing ground to Carod.
Hatherly was dropped on lap 5, with Schurter finally shedding Sarrou on the last lap, to finish 35 seconds behind Carod in second place. Sarrou managed to hang on for third.
There were no signs, however, of disappointment for Schurter as crossing the line in second meant securing the series for a staggering eighth time.
"The whole season, with winning World Champs and now also winning the overall, it's like a dream," said Schurter in the post race interview on Red Bull TV. The past two years I haven't been there where I wanted and now coming back with those two important victories, it's really nice and it feels really good."
Carod's win vaulted him from fifth to second in the final World Cup standings, with Luca Braidot's (Santa Cruz FSA) fifth enough to keep in third place overall. David Valero (BH Templo Cafes UCC) finished sixth, enough to drop him from second to fourth in the final standings.
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Simone is a degree-qualified journalist that has accumulated decades of wide-ranging experience while working across a variety of leading media organisations. She joined Cyclingnews as a Production Editor at the start of the 2021 season and has now moved into the role of Australia Editor. Previously she worked as a freelance writer, Australian Editor at Ella CyclingTips and as a correspondent for Reuters and Bloomberg. Cycling was initially purely a leisure pursuit for Simone, who started out as a business journalist, but in 2015 her career focus also shifted to the sport.
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