Loana Lecomte's impressive victory at the Nove Mesto XCO World Cup

French rider Loana Lecomte has once again shown that her current performance is far above her rivals. The XCO World Cup in Nove Mesto has left us with all kinds of scenes, with crashes, mechanical problems and epic comebacks like the one starring McConnell.

Loana Lecomte wins the XCO World Cup in Nove Mesto

Austria's Laura Stigger and Great Britain's Annie Last were the fastest at the start, but it only took France's Loana Lecomte a few metres to get to the front, pick up the pace and start to order the race. By the first uphill, Lecomte had already taken a group that included Americans Kate Courtney and Haley Batten.

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Without looking back, Lecomte was still in the lead and increasing her advantage during the first lap. Behind her, Batten, Courtney and Ferrand Prevot were chasing her about 20 seconds behind.

In Nove Mesto, in addition to the race itself, the Americans Batten and Courtney were competing for their place at the Olympic Games, so a big fight was expected between them.

Although it was no longer raining, the course was still very wet in the first few laps, which meant that even the world's best specialists chose to walk up some sections.

On lap 2 Lecomte continued with her devastating pace and was already 50 seconds ahead of Haley Batten who was second and alone after a crash knocked Kate Courtney out of the race. Courtney broke her right brake lever forcing her to stop in the technical area and losing any chance of fighting for the race.

The big comeback of the day was Australian Bec McConnell of the Primaflor Mondraker team, who on lap 3 was already in second place ahead of Haley Batten and almost 54 seconds behind the first, Loana Lecomte.

Pauline Ferrand Prevot was suffering from the great effort she had to make at the start to get to the head of the race after starting very late because of her fall in the Short Track on Friday.

On lap 4 Loana Lecomte's lead continued to increase to almost a minute and a half over Rebecca McConnell. 

The final lap bell rang with Lecomte's lead out of doubt. The Frenchwoman was a minute and a half ahead of McConnell and nothing seemed to threaten her victory. The race had entered a false calm where each rider was just trying to maintain her position, but Batten and Ferrand Prevot, third and fourth, were still fighting to try to scrape a place at the end of the race.

Loana Lecomte entered the finish line as the winner of the Nove Mesto 2021 XCO World Cup, Haley Batten was second and Rebecca McConnel third.

Among the Spanish riders, Rocío del Alba García Martinez was once again the best in 22nd position, while Natalia Fischer came in 55th after a great comeback from 70th place.

Results Women 2021 Nove Mesto XCO World Cup

1. Loana Lecomte
2. Haley Batten
3. Rebecca McConnell
4. Pauline Ferrand Prevot
5. Evie Richards
6. Linda Indergand
7. Sina Frei
8. Jolanda Neff
9. Anne Terpstra
10. Anne Tauber