All four Trek World Racing downhill riders performed strongly at Round 5 of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in Windham, New York in front of a large US crowd on a short and technical track. Neko Mulally (USA) took another solid top 30 result to move up in the rankings, Justin Leov (NZL) had his best result of the year in 6th, just 1/10th of a second off the podium, and Tracy Moseley (GBR) kept her perfect record of being on the podium for every World Cup race in 2011, with a 3rd place.
But it was Aaron Gwin's 4th win of the season that had the fans chanting U-S-A-GWIN at the podium and the city adminis trators changing the name of host town Windham to ‘Gwindham’ for the remainder of the day, in a flurry of red white and blue flags, that had everyone talking. Aaron's win, after qualifying first on Friday, was the first win on US soil by an American downhiller since both Missy Giove and Shaun Palmer won in Big Bear, California, in 1999. Furthermore, Aaron joins a small group of 3 men who have won 4 Downhill World Cups in one season, the other two being Francois Gachet (FRA) and the legendary Nicolas Vouilloz (FRA).
This was the second time the World Cup has visited Windham and the course certainly had its share of technical content with three major rock garden sections, and running around two and a half minutes in length. The weather was perfect and the crowds built all morning to beat the numbers from 2010. Tracy had qualified 3rd and was hoping to move up to second, but last year's winner Rachel Atherton (GBR) repeated for 2011, and this season's other in-form rider Floriane Pugin (FRA) took 2nd. Tracy maintains the overall lead of the series by 100 points with 2 races to go.
Gwin Wins Windham
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