Durango’s Asa Vermette’s spectacular World Cup form ended in Saalfelden Leogang, Austria, this past weekend.
Vermette had the top qualifying time in the men’s junior field on his Frameworks Racing bike in tough conditions on Saturday.
Coming into Leogang, Vermette had dominated the first two UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Downhill men’s junior events of the season and won both easily.
It looked like Vermette could’ve been on for a third straight men’s junior downhill win. But he crashed out in the second section of the track and crossed the finish line in 21st with a time of 3 minutes and 49.599 seconds.
France’s Max Alran finished first with a time of 3:17.292. Canada’s Dane Jewett finished second with a 3:17.711 and Mike Huter from Switzerland finished third with a 3:20.169.
Vermette started his final run well and was cruising with ease around the curvy top section. His first split was the second-fastest and was 0.477 seconds faster than Alran’s first split time.
The second split started well and Vermette looked like he was going to take the lead in the second split like he usually does. But then disaster struck in a muddy, super technical part of the track.
“I was going pretty good at the top,” Vermette said in an interview with pinkbike. “I was pushing a bit faster than maybe I should have been. Then I was going into the last stump section before the motorway and I pushed my front end, unclipped my foot, almost saved it and then slid out. So then, I thought it's done, whatever.”
But the drama didn’t stop there for Vermette. After his crash, he got up and started peddling to finish his run. At this point, he was 10 seconds down on the leaders.
He then got into a forest section toward the end of the run and stopped because he thought he saw a red flag. If a rider doesn’t stop when a red flag is waved they face the prospect of being disqualified.
Unfortunately for Vermette, it wasn’t an official waving the red flag it was a fan waving a red beer flag. This cost Vermette even more time and he then cruised to the finish.
If Vermette hadn’t stopped because of the spectator’s red flag, he could’ve finished around 11th or 12th if he kept that 10-second gap to the leaders.
Vermette said he was disappointed with the result but enjoyed the “gnarly track” and was happy he made a mistake like this before he moves up into the men’s elite category.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
