Trespeuch delights Les Deux Alpes with rare SBX World Cup win
Dec 03, 2023·Snowboard Cross
Chloe Trespeuch (FRA) sent her home crowd wild on the opening weekend of the 2023/24 Snowboard Cross campaign on Sunday with a near flawless display to claim only a fifth victory in her 10th season on the FIS World Cup circuit.
In a pulsating Big Final, the 29-year-old trailed Michela Moioli (ITA) and Belle Brockhoff (AUS) over the early features but fought her way back and twice traded first place with the Italian before racing clear over the closing stages.
The result means Trespeuch has upgraded her second places from both the mixed team event held on Saturday and the individual race on the same track last season.
“I am very, very happy to begin the season like that - I had a podium yesterday and a victory today is awesome,” she said.
“The course is technical and fast, with a good shape. I don’t have a lot of victories in my career so thank you Les Deux Alpes and thank you to the spectators, they gave me a lot of power.”
While Trespeuch can still count her career World Cup wins on one hand, her consistent performances brought her eight podiums and second place overall behind only Charlotte Bankes in the race for the Crystal Globe last season.
After four days of mostly appalling conditions, Sunday’s individuals gave the 115 riders in Les Deux Alpes a timely reminder of why they all do it: a dusting of fresh snow overnight creating the ideal racing conditions under a beautifully clear sky.
The welcome change in the weather corresponded to an unwelcome change in fortunes for Bankes, however. The Brit had looked in fine form when winning Saturday’s mixed team event alongside Huw Nightingale but she made a mess of her qualifying runs a day later, failing to advance to the knockout stages.
That left a clearer route to the final for Trespeuch, Moioli and Brockhoff, who all raced clean all day, ultimately denying Germany’s Jana Fischer a spot on the podium.
"We were all fighting for that number one position," Brockhoff said. "Turn four is really tight and Jana and I were coming in pretty hard so we got pretty close to each other, making the best of what we had. It was a really good day for all of us."
In the men’s race, Eliot Grondin (CAN) blocked a fairytale return to the top of the podium for Alessandro Haemmerle (AUT), the Beijing 2022 Olympic champion who won three crystal globes in a row from 2019-2021. The Austrian started only four races last season and came a distant 14th in Les Deux Alpes, but he stayed so close to Grondin through the latter stages of Sunday’s final he could have swapped bibs with the eventual winner.
Grondin had raced superbly in the team event on Saturday before his partner fell and the Canadian continued his aggressive strategy from the start in the individual, forcing his way to the front and staying there through all of his races on Sunday.
“I had a good start and protected the lead the whole way down,” Grondin, savouring a fourth world cup win of his career, said. “I had great speed all week and have been racing some super good guys all day, especially Alessandro over the first three rounds. It’s a crazy day really after winning qualifications in the morning.”
Haemmerle was delighted to have finished only 0.07 seconds off the pace and with clear daylight behind him to Lucas Eguibar - the Spanish rider who came second overall last season to Martin Noerl (GER) – and Kalle Koblet (SUI) in fourth.
"It feels just great after last year," Haemmerle said. "Coming back from an injury and starting off that strong. It was a pleasure riding all day with Eliot and it was just a bunch of fun riding on the track and feeling good."
Noerl, by contrast, had been uncertain of his form coming into the opening weekend of the season and those doubts proved well-founded as the defending Crystal Globe champion exited at the quarterfinal stage.
The riders will now have a two-week chance to fine-tune before the high-octane action resumes at Cervinia on 15-17 December.
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