Things you can count on in 2025: The sun rises in the east and sets in the west and Durango’s Christopher Blevins wins UCI Mountain Bike World Cup men’s elite short track races.
Blevins simply can’t be beat in short tracks this season and showed his prowess again at Val di Sole, Italy, last weekend. He continued his historic start to the season with his fifth short track win. It’s the first time in UCI Mountain Bike World Cup history that a men’s elite rider has won the first five short track races of the year.
After another short track success, Blevins did well to battle in the cross-country Olympic race and finished eighth for some valuable points.
“It was a solid one,” Blevins said about his weekend. “Being able to do another short track win, I feel like I'm in a really good rhythm there with combining fitness, tactics and strategy and then that last sprint. So it’s always good to get a win. Then (in the cross-country), I haven't put together consistent top 10s on medium days. So I was happy to find that yesterday (Sunday).”
Blevins finished the short track race in first on Friday in 20 minutes and 13 seconds after 12 laps around the 900-meter short track. Behind Blevins was his Specialized Factory Racing teammate Victor Koretzky in second a second back and Luca Schwarzbauer finished third also a second back of Blevins.
The short track course was one of the shortest and fastest short track courses on the World Cup calendar. It wasn’t super technical and it was mostly on dry grass, which made it super dusty throughout.
Blevins said it was a boring course to just ride. But for a race, it created a cool dynamic and Blevins likened it to a grass crit race where riders had to fight for position continuously.
There have been a few short track races this year where riders have gone with gravel tires. Val di Sole was different. Blevins went with 2.5-inch wide tires because the course was quite bumpy. Wider tires help out with those bumps, according to Blevins.
Blevins had a good start and led the group around the first corner. He avoided the massive middle pack. The Durangoan led the first lap and let Schwarzbauer do the work for the next few laps as Blevins stayed in the top four.
During the fifth lap, Blevins fell back toward the bottom of the top 10, which was risky with how congested the riders were. However, he made it out of and got back into the top three in the sixth lap.
“It's hard to always save energy, but keep position,” Blevins said. “So it's really easy to be swallowed and go from second to 10th. Then you have to be assertive to find those spots to get back. I knew when I drifted back that I wanted to get back to the front right away. But it happens, especially in a flat short track like that.”
Blevins stayed in the top four for the next few laps as the front group didn’t push the pace too much as the laps counted down.
Schwarzbauer led to start the final lap followed by Blevins in second.
Blevins took the lead around the outside of the second left-hander in the final lap. He never gave the lead up as he waited until the second half the lap to throw down a massive attack and give himself a big lead. He kept that lead until the finish straight and could celebrate as he sat up and had both hands in the air, victorious again.
“It was probably the highest peak power I've done in a mountain bike race,” Blevins said about his attack. “So, it was the card that I knew I could play and ideally could get a gap there. It just worked out in my favor and then I felt really good for that sprint.”
On Sunday, Blevins finished eighth in 1:28:55 in the men’s elite cross-country Olympic race (XCO) after a lap around the short track and eight laps around the 3.7-kilometer XCO course. Fellow Specialized Factory Racing rider Martin Vidaurre won the race in 1:27:42, 1:13 ahead of Blevins. Mathis Azzaro was second in 1:28:05 and Fabio Püntener was third in 1:28:21.
Blevins had a solid start and moved into second early in the start loop. He was at the front at the start of the first lap and filed in behind Koretzky in third.
The Durango star dropped back into sixth at the start of the second lap, 2 seconds back. Blevins then made a move at the start of the second lap and took the lead.
Filippo Colombo made a push at the end of the second lap and Blevins dropped to fourth. Blevins was 16 seconds back in fifth at the start of the third lap.
Blevins dropped into the second chase group and was seventh at the start of the fourth lap. He continued to drop time to the leaders and 31 seconds back in 11th at the start of lap five.
The fall down the leaderboard continued for Blevins and he fell even more during the sixth lap into 13th.
Blevins battled back into the top 10 in the seventh lap. His comeback continued in the final lap and he sprinted to the line for eighth place.
“You have to always ride your pace,” Blevins said. “Some laps you're going to go a little deeper. Some laps you will need to recover. But when you do have to let the wheels go and ride your pace, it takes a lot of honesty. Otherwise, you'll blow up, worse. But at the same time, you don't know what can happen; sometimes legs come around and you can ride back into it.”
Blevins still leads the men’s elite mountain bike World Cup standings as the riders have a couple of weeks off before the next World Cup in Andorra on July 9-13. He has 1,282 points while Vidaurre has 952 and Koretzky has 866.
Durango’s Asa Vermette continued to bounce back from a poor start to the men’s junior downhill season with his second consecutive podium on Saturday at Val di Sole. Vermette finished third.
The 18-year-old rising star finished third in 3:43.764 after descending the 2.24 km course. Till Alran won the race in 3:42.095 and his brother Max Alran finished second in 3:42.595.
Vermette had the third fastest qualifying time and was the third last rider to hit the track during the race. Vermette wasn’t super quick at the top of the run in the first two splits and was eighth-tenths down on the quickest run at the time, done by Tyler Waite. Vermette hasn’t been the quickest at the top of most tracks this year.
Splits 4 and 5 were where Vermette made up the time he needed on Waite and crossed the line 0.899 seconds ahead of Waite to take the lead.
Unfortunately for the Durango star and his fans, both Alran brothers easily surpassed Vermette’s time and stopped Vermette from achieving his first World Cup victory of the season.
Vermette is fourth in the men’s junior downhill standings with 147 points. Max Alran leads the standings with 205 points, followed by Waite with 175 and Till Alran in third with 168.
The next round of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Men’s Junior Downhill series is in La Thuile, Valle d’Aosta, Italy from July 3-6.
Durango resident and former Fort Lewis College student-athlete Savilia Blunk had a solid weekend in Val di Sole and finished 10th in the women’s elite cross-country short track race (XCC) and eighth in the women’s elite XCO race.
“I'm happy with how I felt this last weekend,” Blunk said. “I was feeling really strong, and after Leogang, I recognized I was a little bit fatigued. It's been a challenge to figure out the balance between training and recovering between these World Cups. When you just have two and a half weeks, or two weeks between each, it's kind of tricky. It's enough time to do some training and keep the engine kind of building, but then you don't want to do too much, because you have the first race again on Friday.”
On Friday, Blunk finished 10th in the women’s elite XCC race in 21:04, 11 seconds behind winner Puck Pieterse. Jenny Rissveds was in second in 20:53 and Laura Stigger was third in 20:54.
The short track course was a mixture of a tactical and a physical battle, according to Blunk. She said riders had to have good cornering speed and had to tackle power sections and punchy climbs.
Blunk didn’t have the best start and was around 15th as the pack stayed together for the first lap. She dropped down to 27th at the start of the third lap.
“My start off the line was fine, but I made a critical decision error,” Blunk said. “I think it was the first lap where I tried to go up on the right side of the inside of the corner, and I was with Puck at the time. We were both at the same position in the back. She went left side outside, and I went right side inside and I lost a ton of positions in that corner, which put me back in 30th. She had gone up the left and made it to the front in that one move.”
The field stayed together during the super quick and less technical short track course. She was 21st but only three seconds back at the start of the fourth lap.
Blunk methodically made her way up through the lead pack and was 11th only a second back during the seventh lap.
Pieterse made a few small attacks to slightly cut up the lead group at times before the final lap. Blunk hung in there, but on the last lap, the leaders put the pedal down and Blunk was left in the dust to pick up a 10th-place finish.
Blunk said she made certain assertive moves to make her way through the field, was relaxed and wasn’t on the gas the whole time. As she got closer to the front, Blunk wished she was a little more assertive and had gone for the leaders more.
On Sunday, Blunk finished in eighth in the women’s elite XCO race in 1:31:47 after a lap around the short track and seven laps around the XCO course. Pieterse won in 1:29:08, followed by Blunk’s Decathlon Ford teammate Samara Maxwell in 1:29:34 and Stigger in third in 1:29:52.
Blunk got a decent start from the second row and was 12th after the start loop, as there was a huge front group. She got up to 11th during the second half of the lap as the field spread out and Blunk was about 20 seconds behind Rissveds.
Rissveds and Pieterse really pushed the pace at the front and Blunk was eighth in the second chase group with four riders about 35 seconds back.
The Ford Decathlon teammates found each other as Maxwell and Blunk rode together in the middle of the second lap as Maxwell had great pace after a poor start and Blunk maintained her pace.
Maxwell passed her and Blunk was in ninth, about a minute back of the surging Pieterse at the front. Blunk started the third lap in 10th at the end of a group of three, about 1:10 back from Pieterse.
“Sammy (Maxwell) and I am super different riders and our strengths are in really different places … I could have gone with Jenny and Puck, but it's this constant kind of holding myself back, because I know maybe if I had gone with them, I wouldn't be able to hold it for the whole race,” Blunk said.
It was a lonely ride in the middle of the race for Blunk, who didn’t have the pace to get into the chase group and was on her own in seventh; she was 45 seconds behind Jen Jackson in sixth.
Jolanda Neff eventually caught Blunk during the fifth lap and briefly overtook her but Blunk responded and took back seventh during the sixth lap.
The two riders battled back and forth at the end of the last lap, but Blunk didn’t have enough left to outsprint Neff.
Blunk said the course layout didn’t help her battle with Neff. She was passed by Neff before the feed zone, which is super tight and it’s very hard to pass in that section. Then, the course turns onto the finishing straight, which is only 50 meters long and doesn’t allow for a long sprint to the line, which didn’t help Blunk.
Next up for Blunk is the USA Cycling National Championships. She’ll be skipping the next round of the World Cup in Andorra so she can compete in the XCO and XCC national championships in Roanoke, Virginia, from July 14-20.
Bailey Cioppa had a good women’s U-23 XCC race before she crashed and had a brake issue in the women’s U-23 XCO race.
Cioppa finished 12th in Friday’s XCC race in 20:15, seven seconds behind Nicole Bradbury in first.
On Sunday, Cioppa finished in 36th in the XCO race, 9:06 behind Valentina Corvi in first.
“A little heartbroken on the finish line of yesterday’s xco,” Cioppa wrote on Instagram. “I found the ground lap 1 and ended up breaking my brake, which turned into a slow trot to the tech zone. Stuff happens and I’m proud for staying in it as much as I could.”
Riley Amos continues to gain valuable experience in his first season in the men’s elite field. He finished 19th in the XCC race, eight seconds behind Blevins and 22nd in the XCO race, 3:02 behind Viduarre.
“Val di Sole was an awesome week,” Amos said. “Sunday’s race was a really good day, finally feeling really strong and actually racing from start to finish with the top guys. Ended up getting a little comfortable on the tech sections and was pushing it a little hot closing down some gaps and hit the ground a couple times giving back most of the ground I was gaining.”
Ivan Sippy finished 29th in the men’s U-23 XCC race and 65th in the men’s U-23 XCO race. Lauren Aggeler finished 45th in the women’s U-23 XCO race and Durango resident Sofia Waite did not finish either of the women’s U-23 races.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
