Chatel Razorbike 2010 (the lost report..!)

Chatel Razorbike 2010
This is the third year of the Chatel Razorbike which consists of two races, a mass start race from the top of the mountain to the bottom and also a 4X race – all on snow.

Racing on snow is nothing new, but it is often limited to ‘invite only’ style races, and despite the huge amounts of snow we had in the UK this winter, not something we often get a chance to race on in the UK, so it was great to see that this race was open to all.

Indeed, the event had local race feel to it, with a lot of the riders and racers knowing each other from the race scene. The organisation was typically French laissez-faire, when I asked what time they would be racing I was simply told “maybe quite soon as the weather might change”, a few more cups of coffee and roll-up cigarettes and they started making their way to the top.

There was €1500 prize money on offer, with the event well supported by industry sponsors and also the Chatel Tourist Office, showing their commitment to mountain biking in the area – something that shinesthrough at the Bike Park here in the summer.

Derby/mass start
The first event of the day was the mass start race down from the top of the mountain to the bottom, a vertical descent of just under 1km. Clement Benoit won this round in a blistering 7m 44s with the next rider (Nils Verniol) 52 seconds behind him. The rest of the pack was fairly evenly spread with the later riders coming in at just over 30 minutes. I guess the snow separates the men from the boys.

4X
The main event was the four cross race. Very much like a typical 4X track we might have in the UK, although slightly steeper, and of course on snow. My initial thought was that there wouldn’t be anywhere to overtake. However, the snow clearly slowed the pace down and made it difficult to stay to any one racing line, meaning that there were a fair few swaps of the lead between the start and finish making for some pretty good racing.

The weather in the week up to the race had been decidedly warm, up to 19degrees at times, with the weather on the day around the 14degrees mark. There had also been rain the previous night and throughout the morning. This made the snow very slushy and would be neigh on impossible for a bike to ride through. Fortunately the course builders did a great job of preparing the course with salt and side slipping down it on skis, the cumulative result of which was a surprisingly firm course, with the tyres only penetrating perhaps 3-4 cm through the snow – perfect!

The course also had some reasonable size jumps in it, again nothing you wouldn’t see on a typical 4X track, but the fact that they were landing on snow would certainly make me think twice. Sure enough, those that hadn’t got their suspension set up or their landing right were quickly bucked off or skidded off line and out of the race.

Results
4X
1 – Thibault RUFFIN
2 – Charly di PASQUALE
3 – Yoann PACCARD
4 – Cyril KURTZ
DERBY
1 – Clement BENOIT (7m 44s)
2 – Nils VERNIOL (8m 36s)
3 – Nicolas MARQUIS (8m 54s)
4 – Florent FOILANE (9m 05s)
OVERALL
1 – Yoann PACCARD (prize money €600)
2 – Charly DI PASQUALE (prize money €400)
3 – Cyril KURTZ (prize money €300)
4 – Alexis BOTTIN (prize money €200)

Thanks to Paul at Riders Retreat for pulling this together. Look out for blog updates from him this summer and don’t miss your chance to win a holiday with RR by watching our video from Round 3 of the BritishDHSeries.

Click the logo to visit RR:

If you liked this post why not check out these?

1. Weather Report – Saturday
2. 2010 British Downhill Series (BDS) Entries are now live!
3. New Vandal Clothing site is online