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Imagine trying to follow Ronan Dunne. Then imagine trying to follow him at Val di Sole. Then imagine following Ronan Dunne at Val di Sole while chitchatting to narrate your run.
Jackson is on another level right now and it's hard to bet against him this weekend. Kid has got the speed.
NOOOOOO!!!!
Imagine being Ronan's rear wheel lol. I wonder how many he will destroy this weekend, based on the raw, I guess that's one already.
Good news is you still got time to play Vital Fantasy 🤗
Le rawr from the FAST AF crew -
Wyn still rockin the GT. Hopefully that thing makes it through VDS and lasts till Champerey!
Dak with the no gloves, untucked jersey, ape hangers in praccy... Ya LOVE to see it
BK Sport practice vid -
Update from Sam Gale:
Sam Gale...if you read this. No joke. We lost an incredible human being & a joyous downhiller to a similar injury at the Snowshoe NORBA National. He get an infection from a football sized gape in the back of his thigh/butt from a stump. Took 6 months of reinfection for it to get into his heart & take him from us far too soon.
Jack Daub you are missed my friend! ❤️
some XC raw footage from VDS
press conference video
Just watched the Vital Raw for VDS day one and I really like what they've done with the track. In years past it's seemingly gone straight down the fall line and been mega fast and rough, and it seems like they're switchbacking and traversing more. Still very technical, definitely not easy, especially with the dust, but less deadly. Obviously not safe (Anna N. & Sam G.), but safer. I remember the 2012 track that Gwin won by almost eight seconds looked like it was straight down the hill with one brief little tight section.
Anyone got the PDFs from the live timing website? The site is bugging for me and only showing one rider as a DNF for each category
The other site has full results if that helps (I'm getting the same results as you are from the timimg site).
Jackson casually passing Ronan continues to talk not sounding like he missed a beat while Ronan is breathing hard trying to talk is insane,
Jackson’s full run course preview, no cut to Ronan.
Was having a think earlier ahead of qualifying - unless I’ve probably missed someone off, we now have 20 elite men World Cup / world champ winners currently racing in the field - mad considering only 20 get through Q1 - competition has never been so high! Love to see it and the track looks great this year
Amaury
Loic
Loris
Thibault
Benoit
Alexandre fayolle
Remi thirion
Ronan
Oisin
Andy kolb
Charlie Hatton
Finn
Jordan Williams
Troy brosnan
Gwin
Jackson
Laurie
Danny hart
Reece Wilson
Martin maes
Anyone else I’ve missed?
I think they said on the broadcast that there were 23 previous winners competing at an earlier round.
Man the difference between Ronan out of breadth, feeling all the hard impacts and having to focus is crazy compared to Goldstone.
Matt Walker
Like everything from the UCI. It's so hard to find anything from them.
The other site is reporting that Amaury Pierron broke his collarbone in practice yesterday. 😟
the snake is eating this weekend.
Sorry Amaury
Scrolling through the non-qualifiers list after Q1 is wild..
At this rate there won't be a lot of DH riders with UCI points in 2026.
that was the plan all along, those big teams? gone in 2026, no need for that anymore when the teams keep the points...
First guy to not make it thru q1 6 seconds off the fastest time. Tech and fresh sections has caused a bit of separation (especially for top 3). But the times are still insanely tight.
For those riders gearing up for q2 you’d think the team is probably even more of a factor on a track like this. The teams that can really scout q1 are going to have a big advantage when the margins are going to be so small.
His point was that the top riders are nuking themselves because this sport is insanely random & attrition rate will dwindle the field down so much that teams won't build any points, even if they field an entire shelf of racers.
That's always been my issue with the small block of finalists. When you force these racers into a miniscule time window, you elevate the injury probability exponentially.
It doesn't tick up the injury rate by a rider or two. Timed training used to just be a guide for how long a single run would take at a hard pace.
Now...it's a qualifying run to see where you stand.
Qualifying. Q2. Finals.
Bikes explode. Tracks go away. Riders fatigue & errors are made.
But I am GLAD they added a wiggle or two to the track. Turns are time. We need times to separate.
We REALLY need a bit of randomness in the "segments" that create time gaps in unexpected sequences on track.
Leogang sucked in terms of how riders gained or lost time. Result was pretty much known before they came across the catch net.
Full Q1 results: https://www.vitalmtb.com/news/news/results-2025-val-di-sole-uci-world-cup-dh-elite-qualifying
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