Lenzerheide MTB World Cup DH / XCO – What To Expect

by | Jul 8, 2022 | Bike, Bike Events & Racing, Bike Racing News

The fastest mountain bikers in the world are converging in the land of expensive food and beautiful mountains to battle out another round of World Cup racing in the downhill, short track, and cross country disciplines! This will be round 4 of 8 for the Downhill World Cup and round 5 of 9 on the XC circuit. There has been a whole month since the last round in Leogang so a fair amount of time to make some meaningful changes to the body and equipment, we’ll see who is coming out of the break on good form!

Lenzerheide Mtb World Cup Dh / Xco - What To Expect
3 more World Cup Rounds for Mr Minn to sport the rainbow stripes (or maybe more if he does it again in Les Gets?) and it is Alan Hatherly’s first World Cup of the season without the SA flag on his chest but we’re sure that won’t slow him down a bit. PC: Bartek Wolinski / Red Bull Content Pool

The Tracks

Both downhill and XC on this weekend and we have 2 course previews linked below for you.
The DH Track is featuring here for the 7th year since 2015 but they’ve thrown in some new technical sections that have the rider puzzling a fair bit! The DH track is 2.2km long and drops 413 meters at high speed! Last year’s winning time was well below 3 minutes at 2:46 for Loris Vergier.

Lenzerheide World Cup Downhill Track

On the XCO side of things it is a 5 lap course for the women and 6 laps for the men. 4.1km in length and featuring 188m of vertical gain. Most of the climbing is fast and not technical while the descents are a naturally very rocky and packed with roots, this shouldn’t bee too much of an issue with the sunny weather this weekend.

Lenzerheide World Cup XCO track

Who Is Racing

2021 Winners:
XCO – Evie Richards and Victor Koretzky
(Mariske Strauss 26th / Candice Lill 34th / Alan Hatherly 4th / Arno du Toit 72nd)
DH – Myriam Nicole and Loris Vergier (Greg Minnaar 19th)

Lenzerheide Mtb World Cup Dh / Xco - What To Expect
There is a good host of South African riders taking to the tracks in Lenzerheide this weekend! PC: Bartek Wolinski / Red Bull Content Pool

Have a look at the names of the South African contingent racing Lenzerhiede in 2022 below!

Junior Boys DH
Keagan Brand
Alex De bruin
Ike Klaasen

U23 Women XCO
Andrea Schöfmann

U23 Men XCO
Luke Moir
Daniel van der Walt
Johan van Zyl
Alex Miller (Nam)
Hugo Hahn (Nam)

Elite Women XC
Candice Lill

Elite Men DH (qualifying result)
Connor Finnis (93rd)
Greg Minnaar (18th)
Stefan Garklicki (92nd)
Rory Kirk (124th)
Chris Philogene (52nd)
Niko Velasco (82nd)
Johann Potgeiter (103rd)
Theo Erlangsen (73rd)

Lenzerheide Mtb World Cup Dh / Xco - What To Expect
We can’t wait to see the racing action from the beautiful mountains of Lenzerheide, Switzerland! PC: Bartek Wolinski / Red Bull Content Pool

Where and When to Watch

RedBull TV will be live streaming as usual and the schedule is below

Friday 8 July
XCC Elite Men and Women – 17:35

Saturday 9 July
Elite Women DH Finals – 12:25
Elite Men DH Finals – 13:45

Sunday 10 July
Elite Women XCO – 10:45
Elite Men XCO – 13:00

Live Timing

More Content From Lenzerheide

Practice Clips from Vital MTB (Technical sections – 3:10 / 8:40 / 10:45)
XCO highlights from 2021