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MTB
Five times Les Gets served up an unforgettable race
The French Alps resort has hosted some brilliant Mercedes-Benz UCI Mountain Bike World Cups and World Championship races in its time. But which run is the best?
When the world’s fastest mountain bikers travel to Les Gets, they know they are in for one of the most exhilarating rides of the year. The UCI World Cup venue includes some of the highest top and average speeds of any racetrack as racers hurtle down the 1,800-metre Mont Chéry mountain.
From the start to the finish of Les Gets’ track, there is barely a minute (or second) to blink: wide, arcing turns come one after the other; deep gullies slingshot bikes from one direction to the next; enormous speed jumps send riders flying down the steep slopes.
To add to the spectacle, Les Gets has always attracted one of the biggest and most enthusiastic crowds on the circuit – Fort William is perhaps the only event that can rival the atmosphere and action of this classic French venue.
Ahead of this year's race (which you can watch live on Red Bull TV from 11:30am GMT on Saturday 3 July), we've rounded up the best runs in the venue's history.
1. Anne-Caroline Chausson crashes big and still wins, 1999
Downhill races have changed a lot since the late '90s. Back then, the courses were much longer, and the bikes were less developed. Les Gets 1999 was a mudfest and the treacherous conditions made for a compelling watch. Frenchwoman Anne-Caroline Chausson – arguably the best female cyclist of all time – was set for a race win (starting in the video above at 6:02) when a nasty crash threw her off-course and tumbling down the hillside. For most people, this would have been game over, but Chausson rushed back up to the track (with a little help from some spectators) and finished her run a monumental 17 seconds faster than any other woman – a memorable win even by Chausson’s exceedingly high standards.
2. Fabien Barel takes World Championships gold, Peaty crashes out, 2004
Frenchman and mountain biking legend Fabien Barel was at the top of his game when the World Championships rolled into town in 2004. Tens of thousands of French and British fans crowded into the resort anticipating a fiercely-contested head-to-head between Barel and Britain’s Steve Peat.
The course was the quickest it had ever been, thanks to the riders' new, lighter, faster, longer and generally more futuristic-looking Championship bikes.
After a week of meticulous preparation, Barel put in a storming run to win the race, but Peat’s wipeout threatened to steal the show.
On course for a race win, Peaty had the Brits celebrating when he burst into the finish arena with just a few hundred metres of track left. Unfortunately for Steve, he came in just a bit too hot and crashed out in the deep dust, leaving Barel to seize a historic French victory.
3 & 4. Bruni and Pierron fight it out on home turf, 2019
In 2019, Les Gets returned to World Cup racing after a 15-year hiatus, and tens of thousands of fans packed the sides of the track to roar support for their French heroes battling for a home victory. The day began promisingly as Thibaut Dapréla won the junior men’s race and Lauryne Chappaz took third in junior women. Next, Marine Cabirou finished in second place, less than a second off the win in elite women. By the time the elite men's racing started, the crowd was on their feet. There were two clear favourites – Loïc Bruni and Amaury Pierron – and they were both French.
Bruni stepped on the gas and put on a display of timing and precision as he sped down the mountain. The fans screamed as he crossed the finish line in the lead – they had just witnessed a masterful ride and a French win was assured.
In any normal world, no one would have been able to better Bruni’s mind-blowing run. However, the last man down the hill, Amaury Pierron (whose run starts at 3:16 in the video above), has never been one for sticking to the rules of physics. The 2018 series winner defied all logic as he forgot the brakes and went hell-for-leather, two-wheel drifting his way into the valley with what will be remembered as one of the greatest downhill runs of all time.
5. Vali Höll hints at what is to come, 2019
At the same race in 2019, Austrian sensation Vali Höll was on a fast rise to the top of the sport. Racing as a junior, she had already won multiple World Cups by large margins and was edging towards the top elite times. Bred on epic Alpine downhills as a youth near Leogang, Austria’s own World Cup venue, the track in Les Gets posed no problems for Höll as she tore it apart to take another junior win. She set the fastest women’s time of the event in the process – over a second faster than Tracey Hannah’s winning elite time. Sure, Höll rode earlier in the day and the course was likely more degraded by the time elites were racing, but her outstanding result was a sign of things to come.
