80km/hr on snow, stitches, and sitting second: Raphaël Gagné in Switzerland

With fresh stitches in his chin, Canadian cross country racer is still sitting second overall in the Gstaad Snow Bike Festival, a four day mountain bike stage race taking place in Switzerland.

Remarkably, it wasn’t the 60 kilometre per hour snowy descent – that’s average speed – that started Friday’s Stage 1 that sent the Canadian to the medical tent. Gagné held his own as the mass-start field descended 1,100m in six kilometres from Rinderberg to Zweisimmen in just six adrenaline-filled minutes, hitting speeds of 80kph on snow along the way.

Having survived that, it was something every Canadian winter driver can relate to that caused problems for the Olympic mountain biker. Transitioning from pavement to snow, he hit a patch of black ice. The end result was a fresh set of stitches, but that didn’t slow Gagné down. He still sits second overall in Switzerland after 3 of four stages.

Gagné started off strong in the prologue, where hi finished in second. The Silverback OMX rider followed up with a third on the terrifying Stage 1 downhill, and a second place on Saturday’s Stage 2. Only one stage of racing remains, but with 1,120m of elevation gain over 34km, the race is hardly over.

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Day one @snowbikefestival TT prologue, rode somewhat within myself and that’s a good thing, lot’s of close calls with cars and pedestrians on a shared course. It was fun and fast, hard fast snow and pavement. 2nd overall in a tight top 10 ??❄️?‍♂️? Tomorrow 35k starting with a 6k 1050m vertical drop ⛷? and then all climb ?. Jour 1 TT prologue, j’ai respecté mes limites et c’est une bonne chose, un peu de traffic automobile et piéton… parcours rapide, neige dure et un peu beaucoup d’asphalte. Overall 2e dans un top 10 serré, belle journée sur le vélo. Demain 35km avec une descente de 6km au départ droppant 1050m, après juste de la montée ??#snowbikefestival #gstaad #ucisnowbikerace

A post shared by Raphaël Gagné (@raphaelgagne) on Jan 24, 2019 at 11:43am PST

Ramon Lauener of Switzerland has a solid 3 minute 14 second lead over Gagné in second. Germany’s David List is just 23.1 seconds behind the Canadian with one stage remaining. Gagné is the only Canadian entered in the UCI category.

Austria’s Elisabeth Osl leads the women’s race  by 1 minute 11 seconds over Nadine Rieder of Germany, with Poland’s Paula Gorycka trailing seven minutes behind.

Gstaad Snow Bike Festival is the first and, so far, only UCI categorized snow bike race. It is ranked as a C1 stage race. If Gagné can hold his position, he’ll earn some extra UCI points to help him during his summer World Cup campaign.