Auclair, Arsenault ride to Canada’s best finishes yet at a wet, muddy 2015 UCI mountain bike worlds

On Thursday in Vallnord, Andorra, Raphael Auclair and Laurie Arseneault rode to two of Canada’s best finishes of the UCI mountain bike world championships. In the Junior men’s cross-country division, Auclair took ninth, while Arsenault placed 18th among the womens’ field of XCO riders.

Winning the Junior women’s title was Martina Berta, with Simon Andreassen defending his own title on the men’s side.

The women’s race kicked off the day’s competition under wet, sloppy conditions, with the course drenched by heavy downpours the night before. As a consequence, the terrain was more difficult than it may otherwise have been, and it showed. During the first of four laps, Great Britain’s Evie Richards lost a lead to Berta, with the former struggling on the slippery ground, made all the more difficult by the high altitude. Berta, however, was able to maintain her lead, taking the rainbow jersey with a comfortable gap on the rest of the field. Switzerland’s Nicole Koller finished with bronze in third place.

Arsenault, starting slow but gathering steam, finished the competition this year with a notable improvement over her 2014 race, when the Canadian rider came in 29th.

If the ground was bad for the women’s race, though, it was even worse for the men. As pervasive as the sound of cheers was the drumming of rain on umbrellas everywhere, with the trails growing wetter and muddier as the day progressed. Canada’s Auclair took off powerfully, slotting himself into fifth by the second lap, but lost too much ground after a couple of crashes to regain that position. Denmark’s Andreassen, though, took the lead almost immediately, powering ahead during the race’s first lap with Egan Bernal of Colombia and Maximilian Brandl of Germany — at least at first. Dropping the two riders as the second lap approached, Andreassen took a cozy 45 second gap ahead of both, taking gold while Bernal, after a tight struggle with Brandl, took silver.

Bernal claimed bronze at the race’s end.

RESULTS