Aaron Gwin has just outqualified Greg Minnaar and Troy Brosnan at the Val di Sole World Cup.

Troy went fastest at the first split, Gwin at the second then Minnaar at third and fourth before Gwin pulled back nearly a second at the bottom. All three of these guys are hammering at the moment. Minnaar took a HUGE smash in practice this morning and is probably lucky to still be riding, the footage is coming later but trust us the fact he got so close to Gwin is miraculous.

In the end, just 0.171 seconds separated two of the greatest riders of all time. We can barely contain our excitement from qualifying, tomorrow is going to be monumental. Breakdown of the splits from Rob Warner’s Instagram here:

.1 between them in qualification, tomorrow will be quite special ???? watch Gwinn and Minaar battle it out in Val Di Sol, UCI World Cup Finals live on @redbulltv

A post shared by Rob Warner (@robwarner970) on Aug 25, 2017 at 5:14am PDT

What does this mean? Minnaar’s lead has been slimmed down to 23 points, it’s basically a one-run championship now but we’ve mapped out some of the permutations here. As he was edged out by Bruni, Brosnan can still technically win it but it would mean Minnaar finishing sixth and Gwin fourth, so it’s not super likely for the Aussie.

Val di Sole Qualifying results

1. Aaron Gwin – 3:37.828
2. Greg Minnaar – 3:37.999
3. Loic Bruni – 3:38.762
4. Troy Brosnan – 3:39.867
5. Loris Vergier – 3:40.209