6 things we learned from the Snowshoe DH World Cup – Pinkbike

Two names that continue to stand out in junior racing are Canadians Jackson Goldstone and Gracey Hemstreet. Both riders have dominated the junior field, with Snowshoe giving both four wins in 2022.

For Jackson, this was his third win in a row. His string of victories now puts him just over sixty points clear of Jordan Williams in the standings, meaning we could see the overall title at Mont-Sainte-Anne, quite a feat if Jackson makes it.

Gracey Hemstreet could also complete the overall win in Canada as she currently has 40 clean points. Gracey will have to fight a little harder at her home race to clinch the series title but with four wins, a 2nd and a 3rd place she has what it takes.

Just like her previous performances on the muddy slopes of Leogang, Camille Balanche proved once again that she’s in a league of her own in the mud. Not only did she make the tricky course look easy, she didn’t seem to fall all weekend. With a course that knocked out or at least stalled most riders in their final runs, Camille was able to put together an almost completely clean run with her feet and beat Myriam Nicole by a respectable four seconds.

Camille’s victory in Snowshoe cements an amazing five straight wins in qualifying with three wins in 2022. These incredible results put Camille 230 points ahead in the standings; If she can win another qualifying session and Myriam Nicole qualifies third, overall victory for 2022 is already set before the final even begins.

Not only did Snowshoe deliver great racing, it brought what was probably the best weekend ever for Continental tires with three elite men on the podium and a second place finish in the junior women’s race for Aimi Kenyon.

While we usually see podium finishes dominated by the likes of Schwalbe and Maxxis, it was interesting to see how the German brand’s new tires performed so well in the mud. With a great weekend for Continental, we saw the career bests of Bernard Kerr, Andreas Kolb and Ronan Dunne.

The elite men’s race was one of the wildest of the year, with a fine line between a potential winning run and disaster. As we’ve learned this season, Amaury Pierron is the master of riding this ridge and he beat the drying track to claim his fourth win of the season. The feat also makes Amaury the fourth elite man to ever win four World Cups in a single year. With Mont-Sainte-Anne and Val di Sole still to come, we’d say he could improve on that record.

If you look at the times for Amaury’s race run, he only took the lead in the final splits with a second split of 12th and the third split in 5th place. Both splits were sections of some of the worst conditions, with Amaury posting blistering times in the safer upper and lower splits. Looking at all four best riders, their finishing positions were all achieved at the fourth split time with no changes to the finish line.

So far we’ve only seen dry and dusty World Cup snowshoe races, with many people saying it was lucky the track wasn’t wet. Finally, after three previous races at this venue, we have seen how difficult the track can be. You know a World Cup course is tough when even the top qualifiers are being jacked all over the course, and even setting foot on the ground isn’t the end of a potential victory run.

The difficult conditions produced some interesting line choices as Dakotah Norton drove a wild line through the Double Drop that looked incredibly fast and we don’t think anyone even attempted the line all week.

While it’s great to not only have World Cup racing in Europe, it’s difficult to overcome the clear lack of riders competing in last weekend’s World Cup race. We saw decent to significant volume declines across all categories. The juniors dropped two riders from the previous lowest numbers and the juniors were missing seven. The elite women’s races saw numbers fall below 30 for the first time this year, with only 20 riders actually on the start list. The elite men also fell below 100 for the first time in 2022 with 93 riders, down 54 riders from the previous lowest number.

With the news that next year we may only see 30 riders in the Finals and an even more international racing calendar, it’s hard to see how that pans out for riders with a significant gap in the number of riders able to race at North , America will be worthwhile.