Filthy conditions greeted the riders, alongside one of the biggest crowds of the season, and Marine Cabirou (Canyon CLLCTV Factory Team) responded in the women’s Elite race with a morale-boosting run to the hotseat.
However, on a course where every corner offered the chance to gain or lose seconds, the contest came down to the familiar battle between Hemstreet and Valentina Höll (YT MOB).
Meanwhile, Dunne celebrated his return to the WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series in the best way possible while Loïc Bruni (Specialized Gravity) gained on overall leader Jackson Goldstone (Santa Cruz Syndicate) but failed to land a knockout blow following the Canadian’s crash.
And facing the worst conditions of the day, Max Alran (Commencal/Muc-Off by Riding Addiction) and Rosa Zierl (CUBE Factory Racing) won the men’s and women’s Junior races to boost their UCI Downhill World Cup leads.
DUNNE CLAIMS COMEBACK WIN FOR THE AGES IN LES GETS
Goldstone felt the total crushing pressure of a UCI World Cup title fight for the first time in France after a tough Friday where he was forced to reach the final through Q2 after hitting the deck in his opening run, and his crash in exactly the same place in the final meaning he fell to sixteenth overall.
Loris Revelli the first down the ramp and attacked the course aggressively, taking both feet off the pedals to steady himself at one stage, but it was Troy Brosnan (Canyon CLLCTV Factory Team) who set the first real benchmark, celebrating a century of UCI Downhill World Cup appearances.
Wearing a bold all-white outfit, Brosnan needed a big performance to offset the wrath of the team kit manager and he produced one - beating the best time by nine seconds to go straight into the hot seat.
Several riders crashed attempting to beat Brosnan’s time including Goldstone, who hopped over the root that brought him down in Q1 but caught another one as he landed and was on the floor before he could react, looking animated in his debrief with mud still caking his face.
Andreas Kolb (YT MOB) was the first serious challenge to the centurion and made it count, flying down the opening section then holding that advantage all the way to the line to put well over a second into Brosnan and spark tearful celebrations from team staff.
It looked like that joy would be short-lived when Amaury Pierron (Commencal/Muc-Off By Riding Addiction) made a rapid start to his run but he was undone in a somersault crash, and it wasn’t until Martin Maes (Orbea/FMD Racing) rolled off the ramp with only five more riders to go that the Austrian was beaten.
Over 1.5 seconds back at the last intermediate split, Maes produced the best finish of the day to stun Kolb by a tenth of a second, and Bruni had no answer to the Belgian.
Dunne did though, lighting up the timing screens from the very first split as he scorched his way to a second UCI World Cup win - the first time an Irishman has achieved that feat.
“Words can’t describe how this feels, it’s been such a rough season and all I’ve been thinking about for the past weeks has been doing well at this race and showing everyone I can still win a race,” Dunne said.
“I go by the motto ‘helicopter or win’, or ‘helicopter or podium’ and I lived up to the name in La Thuile, and here we took a win.”
Meanwhile Bruni’s fifth-place finish means he’s slashed 112 points from Goldstone now but failed to wrestle the leader’s jersey from the Canadian.
“That was the toughest race I’ve ever done for sure,” Goldstone said. “It was rowdy the whole way down and I couldn’t even stay on the bike.
“Somehow still clinged onto the green jersey which is pretty cool so the fact I’m in it with a crash and two bad races is really positive. We’ve just got to go full beans from here and try and beat Loïc.”
HEMSTREET HOLDS NERVE TO DOWN HӦLL ONCE AGAIN
Cabirou needed the repechage to qualify for the Finals in Les Gets, Haute-Savoie but made it count, maximising the conditions she received as one of the first women’s Elite riders off the ramp before the run had been churned up by subsequent competitors.
Despite the sun slowly pushing its way up the valley, that drying was offset by riders beating through the mud every minute and only Tahnée Seagrave (Orbea/FMD Racing) came seriously close to challenging the Frenchwoman before the final runs.
In similar conditions to the Bielsko-Biała (Poland) 2025 season opener won by Seagrave, the Brit pushed hard through the early section and was three seconds ahead with just one intermediate split to go.
However, Seagrave was riding through treacle once she left the forest behind and lost almost five seconds from there to the line.
Jess Blewitt (CUBE Factory Racing) went down within a couple of corners, while Santa Cruz Syndicate’s Nina Hoffmann hit the deck on the very next run and crossed the line 18 seconds down yet still finished provisionally fifth with only four riders to go - illustrating the massive gaps created by the muddy conditions.
Both riders had better luck than Sacha Earnest (Trek Factory Racing) though, the New Zealander crashed in training ahead of the final and suffered a separated AC joint.
Gloria Scarsi (MS-Racing) brought green fleetingly back to the timing screen but as has been the case so often this season, Hemstreet and Höll took centre stage on the final two runs.
Like Seagrave, Höll was up all the way through the trees, not as aggressive as her rival but carrying more speed on corner exit and she looked set to finally break her 2025 UCI World Cup drought.
But the UCI World Champion looked in disbelief as she slid to a stop after the finish line, having gone behind by tenths of a second at the final split, then slipping to third behind Cabirou and Hemstreet who takes her fourth win of the season.
“I don’t even know, I can’t believe that,” Hemstreet said. “I’m actually not a mud rider. I felt super slow up top so I thought ‘I’d rather just crash’ and go in as hot as I can rather than bring it back a bit. It was really tough.”
Hemstreet now sits just 59 points behind Höll at the top of the UCI World Cup standings and the overall leader was downbeat afterwards.
JUNIORS LEADERS TAKE VICTORY IN CONTRASTING STYLES
Zierl pulled off a nail-biting victory in a women’s Junior race that took a host of casualties, most importantly Aletha Ostgaard (Canyon CLLCTV Factory Team) on the penultimate run.
Zierl had gone fastest by 22 seconds, but Ostgaard looked set to immediately knock her off that perch, going fastest at every intermediate split. But her three-second evaporated when she took a wrong turn navigating the final jumps, skewing to the left of a gate meaning the American needed to dismount to get herself back on course and dropped to second.
And with fastest qualifier Cassandre Peizerat unable to match Zierl, that 20-point swing means the Austrian now holds a 65-point lead in the standings.
“I don’t know how I came down here, that was probably the wildest run of my life! I nearly crashed five times or even more,” Zierl said. “Unfortunately, most of the other girls crashed, I just rode down. I stayed in the ruts, tried to go as slowly as possible.”
Max Alran didn’t have anything like those issues as he extended his lead in the men’s Junior standings with a run faster than Dunne’s winning time. The last rider off the ramp immediately went green in his home race and finished the run four seconds ahead of Asa Vermette (Frameworks Racing/5Dev) having been first at every split.
Almost as impressive as the last run of the final was the first though. Tyler Waite (Yeti/FOX Factory Race Team) had a disappointing qualifying and this looked like it could be the round that derailed the Kiwi’s overall ambitions as he trailed home 20th at 23 seconds back.
Yet he set the tone on a drying course and only Vermette and Alran would beat him, meaning Waite leaves France only 29 points behind the UCI World Cup leader.
“It feels insane, I’m cooked right because it was super super physical”, Alran said. “Just battling to the end, I made it to the bottom without too many mistakes and had a good run, just super happy.
"My friends are here, my parents are here, to win here is just incredible. We have an insane crowd.”
The action continues in Les Gets, Haute-Savoie with the UCI Cross-county Olympic World Cup rounding out the weekend’s action on Sunday. Hemstreet, Zierl, Alran and the rest of the downhill pack will next feature in the WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike World Series in Switzerland’s Bike Kingdom - Lenzerheide in three weeks’ time, after the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Valais.
