Wednesday, September 17, 2008

World Cup All-Mountain Championships

I'm making up a new World Cup category for recognition: All-Mountain Championships. The winners of the World Cup Mountaincross and World Cup Downhill titles are specialists. Rachel and Anneke rarely cross over to race each other's disciplines. There's nothing wrong with that at all, but there are a handful of women who race both disciplines throughout the series.

Fionn Griffiths, Mio Suemasa, and Anita Molcik are no strangers to the World Cup podium. However, it seems like they're rarely recognized for their abilities to practice and race all weekend and consistently put together impressive performances in both disciplines. Mountaincross is usually held on Saturday night, the evening before the downhill race. While Rachel and Sabrina are kicking back and watching the action or possibly even turning in early, Fionn, Mio, and Antia are duking it out in the dark on the 4x track. There are more girls who cross over, but these three have managed top-ten overall finishes in both disciplines. I think they deserve a bit more credit.

Unfortunately I'm no statistician, so I don't know how to award the real World Cup All-Mountain Champion title. Antia is the highest-ranked of the three in Mountaincross, but Fionn has the highest ranking in downhill--where there are a lot more racers. So, I'll just list their rankings and let you figure it out. Nice work, girls!

__________2008 WC 4X Overall ___ 2008 WC Downhill Overall
Anita Molcik _____2________________ 9
Mio Suemasa _____3________________ 7
Fionn Griffiths___ 4________________6

No comments: