Lecomte untouchable as French 1-2 Women's XCO at Albstadt World Cup

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France finished 1-2 on Sunday in Albstadt, Germany, for the opening round of the Mountain Bike World Cup, with Under-23 world champion Loana Lecomte (Massi) beating elite world champion Pauline Ferrand Prevot (Absolute-Absalon-BMC). However, Ferrand Prevot took the World Cup leader's jersey, after winning the Short Track on Friday.

Albstadt is one of the hardest courses on the World Cup circuit with two long, steep climbs per lap, and once again it tested the riders. Along with Round 2 of the World Cup, next weekend in Nove Mesto, Czech Republic, Albstadt is a final qualification event for the Tokyo Olympics, so there were 'races within races', as riders fight to qualify for their Olympic teams.

Lecomte simply rode away from the rest of the 106 rider field on the start loop, opening up an 18 second gap on the first major climb of the race. She never looked back, increasing her lead to over a minute by the start of the fifth and final full lap, and eventually beating Ferrand Prevot by 53 seconds.

"I don't believe it," said Lecomte, "in my head it was my goal for today, but I didn't know if I could do it. This race and Nove Mesto are the race qualifications for the Olympic Games [for France] so it was a big goal for me to be in shape for these two World Cups; now that goal is 50% complete."

With Lecomte untouchable at the front, the race action was happening behind. Ferrand Prevot was joined in the early chase by 2019 World Cup champion Kate Courtney (Scott-SRAM) and Australian champion Rebecca McConnell (Primaflor Mondraker XSauce), however, both began to fall back on the second lap, and the early hard pace hurt them later in the race, with McConnell sliding all the way to 21st by the finish.

While Courtney dropped off the pace of Ferrand Prevot, she looked to be solidly in third until her young compatriot, Haley Batten (Trinity Racing), caught her and then dropped her on the third lap. Batten, in only her first elite World Cup, is one of a number of Americans battling for an Olympic spot (Courtney already has one locked up), and she was actually making ground on Ferrand Prevot in the last lap and a half.

The French 1-2 was followed by an American 3-4, as Courtney held onto fourth behind Batten, just ten seconds in front of Yana Belomoina (CST PostNL Bafang), who made a late race surge to take the fifth and final podium spot.

"I honestly didn't know what I was capable of," admitted Batten, "so to start the season like this is pretty incredible. I think in the Short Track I felt really strong, so I just gave it what I had today, and raced my race. I've had a couple of hard races here in the past, in Junior and U23, so to just race so strong and so smooth from start to finish is not something I would have expected previously. I'm not sure how much this counts towards [the American] Olympic criteria, but Nove Mesto does, so this is a really good sign."