World Cup MTB racing Mont-Ste-Anne

Kiara Bisaro - photo : Sylvain Badia

What a weekend! Mont Ste Anne was again host to the mountain biking World Cup this past weekend. Starting on Friday the provincial series was held where our provincial team participated and actually dominated in all the major categories.
Andréanne Pichette, our Junior girl who is current Canada Cup leader, won again Friday morning. Her race was followed by the Junior men which had a large field and Jonathan Boucher had a outstanding race finishing second.
The main race of the provincial cup, Elite men had both of our guys fighting for position throughout the race. When all was said and done, our Opus boys Jonathan Boulanger and Leni Trudel came through with 2nd & 5th place, giving Opus 4 podiums to start the weekend.

Saturday was world cup race day for the worlds best cross country racers and our Opus athlete Kiara Bisaro was sitting high up in the rankings,
ranked tenth in the world before the start of this weekends race. Ten does not seem to be her lucky number. Ten seconds into her race someone in front of her crashed taking her down as the remaining 70 racers tried to sprint by and even over her. As the 70 best riders in the world charged off and the dust settled, our Kiara was still on the ground and just starting to pick up the pieces.
Regardless of the pain she was in, she was able to get her bike working and took off in chase of the pack which by now were a couple minutes up the road. Kiara not only completed her race with a bike that would not change gears properly due the crash but she caught and was able to pass almost half of the racers before the end.
After the race we took inventory of her crash and her helmet was broken in 3 places, stitches were needed for her knee & elbow and she has tire and chainring marks on her back! Quite the trooper to tackle a 2 hour races with all of this.

Beside who will find a picture of her relaxing in our official Opus lawn chair. BTW several hundred children and parents alike stopped at the Opus booth to have their picture taken in our chair.