WC4 Val di Sole

Ibis spon­sored Team 31 returned to com­pe­ti­tion this week­end in Val di Sole, Italy. Team cap­tain, Jen­ny Rissveds, missed the XCO(cross coun­try Olympic dis­tance) race in the last round at Nové Mês­to after suf­fer­ing a heavy crash in the XCC (cross coun­try short track), which result­ed in her need­ing sev­er­al stitch­es in her face [ouch!], but for­tu­nate­ly she did not suf­fer a con­cus­sion. Zoe Cuth­bert was still out for Val di Sole after suf­fer­ing a wrist frac­ture at Nové Mêsto.

In the XCC race on Fri­day Jen­ny was with the lead­ers for the first few laps, but by mid race had dropped to the back of the pack, it was not clear whether it was lack of form or if she got caught up in an acci­dent. Regard­less, Puck Pieterse and Pauline Fer­rand-Pre­vot were set­ting a furi­ous pace at the front of the race, and in the finale Puck out sprint­ed PFP for the win. Jen­ny came across the line 32^nd.

In Sun­day’s XCO race Jen­ny had a fourth row call up after her fin­ish in the XCC, mean­ing that the start of her race would require nav­i­gat­ing heavy traf­fic on this slick, rooty, rocky, course with sev­er­al absurd­ly steep climbs. This is just the type of course Jen­ny loves, and she made a good go of get­ting to the front on the start­ing lap, but real­ized that she could­n’t main­tain that effort for the full 90 min­utes and instead set­tled into her rhythm fin­ish­ing the first lap in 25^th. Then through­out the 6 lap race she pro­ceed­ed to tick off one rid­er after anoth­er — includ­ing many of the heavy hit­ters in the wom­en’s field: Kate Court­ney, Rebec­ca Hen­der­son, and Alessan­dra Keller to name a few.

By lap 5 Jen­ny had caught on to the World Cup Series Leader, Haley Bat­ten and Keller and was sit­ting in 10^th place. On lap 6, Jen­ny and Bat­ten trad­ed blows and even­tu­al­ly shed Keller. Jen­ny was now in 9^th. She kept the pres­sure on and seemed to be get­ting the bet­ter of Bat­ten as they entered the final straight away to the fin­ish line. Jen­ny might have start­ed her sprint a touch ear­ly, or per­haps she was feel­ing the effects of pass­ing more than 20 rid­ers on this demand­ing course. Regard­less, Bat­ten was able to pip Jen­ny at the line for 8^th. Jen­ny set­tled for 9^th.

One of the things that Team 31 was orga­nized to do was to cre­ate an atmos­phere that sup­port­ed rid­ers, with a focus on allow­ing them to per­form at their best — whether that be a 1^st place fin­ish, or 9^th. The win at all costs men­tal­i­ty in sport is men­tal­ly tox­ic and often phys­i­cal­ly unhealthy. Jen­ny’s 9^th place today had to feel sat­is­fy­ing giv­en the cir­cum­stances, and may have been one of the best per­for­mances of the day — out­side of PFP’s dom­i­nant win.

Jen­ny’s team­mate, Kelsey Urban, had a sol­id per­for­mance fin­ish­ing 28^th.

The World Cup heads to Crans Mon­tana, Switzer­land for the next round next weekend.