Double debutant winners came out swinging in Snowshoe this afternoon as both Vali Höll and Reece Wilson notched up their very first elite World Cup wins in some dramatic circumstances. Heating things up after a cautious podium performance in Switzerland, Vali went into the hot seat by close to five seconds before a nervous wait while last women down the hill Myriam Nicole got stuck into her run. Unfortunately for Nicole it unravelled with a crash in the lower rocks which guaranteed what will surely be the first of many Valentina Höll victories. Still it was enough for the series leader to land on the podium alongside Balanche, Cabirou and Seagrave.
The big news in the men's race was overall leader Thibaut Daprela's no score after a big crash in his race run, allowing his closest challenger, Loris Vergier, to close to within 46 points setting up a tasty showdown on Saturday. Vergier himself was a favourite for the race win, but it was his teammate Reece Wilson who stole the show, sneaking ahead of Loic Bruni by the very smallest of margins to add a World Cup win to his repertoire. The men's podium was covered by only just more than a single second with Wallace fifth, Iles fourth, Vergier third, Bruni second and Wilson in first. Meanwhile in the juniors, Izabella Yankova and Jordan Williams took top honours as the attention now switches to the second race in Snowshoe and the final one of the 2021 series. Rain is in the forecast and numerous track switch-ups should keep those outcomes nice and unpredictable.
www.facebook.com/1405831336/videos/1516833225316889
Vergier's qualifier crash/tackle:
www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2878209112444504&id=100007663308567
SAVAGE hit by what it says may be a Junior:
www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2878863349045747&id=100007663308567
In my expert opinion, based on detailed observations of about a dozen ENVE wheels, ENVE introduces structural flaws into their wheels at the spoke holes — and they do this by molding-in the spoke holes (at least this was the case in past years, and I believe they still do that molded-in process). The hole-molding dowels they use (or used) spread the uncured prepreg fibers around the dowel, creating small resin-rich regions in each ply around the dowel where the fibers spread. They should mold the rims whole like We Are One and then drill the spoke holes after. That will prevent microcracks from forming in the relatively brittle epoxy resin-rich pockets that ENVE tends to create in each ply around the spoke holes. Those microcracks can turn into larger cracks that can form large delaminations between plies, or inter-ply transverse cracks through the thickness of the laminate. Cyclical loading like that is just about the worst thing for microcracks around a resin-rich hole in a composite structure. As those epoxy-resin microcracks get larger, the compressive forces on the carbon fibers increase — and carbon fibers usually fail in compression rather than tension. When the carbon fibers fail, you’ll hear them “pop” ply by ply before a big final compressive + tensile catastrophic failure of the remaining composite plies in the structure.
Anyone who knows composites well knows that holes, especially spoke holes, are generally a bad idea in composites (as such, many companies create engineering / design / materials work-arounds to seriously increase the strength of the area around spoke holes in carbon fiber rims). ENVE’s molded-in approach is particularly risky, in my opinion, particularly with how the spokes introduce cyclical loading, spread over a very small surface area, right at the spoke hole...creating a huge gradient of tensile and compressive stresses on the resin and fiber, through the thickness of the laminate, right around the spoke hole. This is a recipe for failure, especially with the crack-prone resin-rich regions in the plies on ENVE’s wheels. I’ve seen ENVEs crack and split at the spoke holes just from wheel building (right along the center line of the rim, initiating from the resin-rich flaws introduced by their spoke-hole-molding dowels). Considering this, it’s not surprising that Thibaut’s rim ultimately broke in several places, right at the spoke holes. The sort of failure we witnessed most likely indicates a structural flaw / cracking at the spoke holes, more than it indicates a flat tire rim failure from compressive impact to the outer rim edge.
Also, Thibaut’s rear wheel appears to be cracked (or a decal is coming off), as seen when he is sitting after the crash...but it looks like a crack / delaminating ply, as it starts at the spoke hole and extends toward the rim edge at a 45-degree angle, consistent with their ply orientation.
I wonder if it isn't the superior method, but as you describe, prone to issues when not applied perfectly or QCed thoroughly.
Anyway, super curious about this one. And it's funny that PB is kinda pretending it's not the talk of the town right now.
m.pinkbike.com/photo/21320807
Surely it had to be a rim/spoke/nipple failure. You can run a carbon rim down the mountain for a solid 30 seconds no tire most any time.
Could just be he didn’t have that jersey with them on.
They would probably clash with the rainbow effect fox gear.
archive.uci.org/docs/default-source/equipment/2021-uci-jerseys-guidelines.pdf