A star is being born on the UCI World Cup circuit, and her name is Gracey Hemstreet.
The Sunshine Coast native powered to another gold roughly a week after making history for Canadian women's downhillers. Her time of three minutes and 21.962 seconds was too much for anyone to equal in Leogang, Austria: including silver medallist Anna Newkirk (3:22.827) and Valentina Höll who nabbed bronze (3:24.389).
Jackson Goldstone, not to be outdone, prevailed in the men's event (2:57.229) narrowly over Loic Bruni (2:57.288) and Henri Kiefer (2:57.764) in that order. It is Goldstone's second consecutive World Cup breakthrough.
'It just clicked'
Marine Cabirou occupied the hot seat for some time on Saturday, watching numerous athletes fail to knock her off of top spot. Yet the ladies' race shifted into high gear when Hemstreet dropped in, rocketing through the course's bottom half to deny Cabirou what would've been her maiden win.
Newkirk, representing the United States, could do no better than second place. That left Höll, the fastest qualifier and reigning UCI World Champion, an opening to seize glory in front of her home fans...who voiced their disappointment audibly when she crossed the line in third.
Hemstreet is now the sixth rider to back up her first career triumph with another, following in the footsteps of Höll and Cabirou in 2021 and 2019 respectively.
“I definitely didn’t [expect that], I hadn’t really been feeling too confident this week and it just clicked," said Hemstreet, who's just risen atop the overall standings. "There actually felt a lot more pressure than I expected, I struggling at the motorway all week but I just pedalled as hard as I could. I felt it at the bottom so I was happy."
'Ups and downs'
Goldstone poured it on to best Bruni at the line by just under six-tenths of a second. From that point on he could do nothing but watch, visibly nervous, as a sequence of top-flight competitors attempted to rain on his parade.
Fastest qualifier Loris Vergier fell short, as did World Cup overall leader Amaury Pierron. Unheralded German Kiefer made a robust challenge as the only man besides Goldstone and Bruni to lead a sector, but it still wasn't enough to disturb the podium order.
"That last split and the stump section going into the motorway, those were the two crucial sections for me that I needed to work on and I definitely felt like I couldn’t have got those better in my run," Goldstone said in a press release. "It’s just crazy, you go through all the emotions of the riders getting close to beating your time and it’s so many ups and downs, you feel for the guys that went down or had mistakes in the run, it’s just a rush of emotions."
The Squamolian is now just 45 points behind Bruni for top spot in the overall due to Pierron's uncharacteristic 18th-place result.
More results are available here.
