After an exciting weekend of racing at the second round of the Enduro World Series, in Val d’Allos. Vouilloz and Moseley take the win. Here’s the recap of all the action

Stage 1.

Graves had a not so brilliant start coming in 12 seconds of the pace and positioning 8th. Punta Ala winner Fabien Barel was 8 seconds of the pace in 5th position, and who set this staggering time…well none other than Jerome Clementz. Just one second behind Clementz is Nico Vouilloz! As for the women’s, Tracy Moseley managed a 12 second lead over Anneke Beerten.

Stage 2.

If Graves and Barel wanted to stay in the game they really had to put some work in, and that’s exactly what they did. Clementz came down the hill with a 9:40.738, Graves came down and put 6 seconds into that time, but even with that lead he was still down by six seconds overall. Barel on the other hand who was down by 8 seconds before, managed to hack 2 seconds off Clementz’s time. Although we must not forget the time set by Vouilloz in the first stage, he has managed to hold on to a second position overall, and in this stage he was only .024 behind Clementz. Tracy Moseley is looking unstoppable with a whole 27 seconds on Beerten in stage 2.

Stage 3.

This stage is quite clearly a very difficult stage to ride as two of the main contenders puncture, Barel and Clementz. It would appear that Clementz punctured relatively late in the stage, losing his lead and about 1:20 which pushed him down to 96th position, Clementz tweeted later that evening, ‘@World_Enduro day1 is done. A flat on Sp3 slow me down but still focus to make a comeback on Sunday. Congrats to @JaredGraves for the lead.’ he is definitely up for still challenging the top guns in the rest of the race. Barel punctured slightly earlier on, and losing about 5:50. Now the fight is really between Vouilloz, Graves and Minnaar. Minnaar had slowly been making his way up through the ranks as the stages went on, first stage he was in 20th, second stage 5th and in the third stage he was in 2nd position only by half a second though. By the end of the first day, he bagged himself a 3rd overall, behind Graves who was in 1st, and Vouilloz in 2nd.

Stage 4.

After a sleepless night from many of the riders, racing came back around before you could say hot potato! As you would expect Jerome was keen to make up some lost time, and that’s just what he did, 5 seconds faster than anyone else. Another rider keen to make up time from a puncture was Barel who positioned 2nd in stage 4. An Enduro racer who was one of the hot favourites to win had been relatively quiet for most of the racing, Remy Absalon, who was all the way back in 11th place after Saturdays racing. Vouilloz came in 7 seconds slower than Clementz in 4th position. Minnaar had a little bit of a slow start, and ended up with a 10th place in stage 4 and almost 30 seconds back. In the women’s Moseley’s domination was slowing down, and was 5 seconds behind Cécile Ravanel, but Moseley was still in first overall.

Stage 5.

After Graves’ impressive performance on Saturday, he was just slightly off the pace in 5th position in stage 4 and now 8th in stage 5, which still left him in contention for the win but he was really going to have to pull something out of the bag in stage 6. On top again was Clementz, but in this stage he was closely followed by Greg Minnaar who was only .169 behind. Vouilloz was less than a second behind that time of Minnaar. In the Women’s Tracy was back on top!

Stage 6.

The final stage was 5 minutes, which was similar to a downhill run, which suited Minnaar who secured a first place in the final stage, but he couldn’t make up all the time he needed to, he still secured himself a 3rd position overall. Although Graves didn’t have the best results throughout the second day he still managed to hold consistent times all weekend and took the 2nd place spot. The number one spot was taken by none other than, Nico Vouilloz who won by 6 seconds, considering the times added up over the weekend would amount to over an hour…it was a flipping close race. Clementz, who punctured in stage 3 managed to claw back some time over day 2, and still came in 7th place overall!

Women’s Podium – Photo: Tribe-Events

Men’s Podium – Photo: Tribe-Events