It wasn’t the first time that a Kaprun World Cup round had seen wet conditions, and it probably won’t be the last. The UCI World Cup finals were sufficiently damp to cause the cancellation of the 4X event, though, making it pretty moist even by Kaprun standards…

It’s the way of wet courses to shift things around at the top, and so it proved to be in the women’s event. With Britain’s Fionn Griffiths and Tracy Moseley occupying the top two slots on the leaderboard going into the final, the odds were high on a Brit series winner. But it wasn’t to be – Fionn and Tracy could only manage third and sixth in the final, with Marla Streb winning and Sabrina Jonnier second. That gave Jonnier just enough points to pip Fionn for the overall title, just 20 points ahead. Tracy was third. They’re both undoubtedly disappointed not to win it, but two Brits in the top three’s not at all shabby…

Fourth and fifth overall were round six winner Marla Streb and Marielle Saner. And Britain’s Helen Gaskell got inside the top twenty with 16th.

Over in the men’s event, it was David Vazquez who won the finals, a second and a half clear of Greg Minnaar. And that’s a pretty sizable margin in World Cup downhill… Third was Nathan Rennie, giving the Australian the overall series title ahead of Cedric Gracia and Mickael Pascal. And the Brits? Steve Peat was 23rd at Kaprun for 9th overall, while Gee Atherton rounded off an impressive season with a eighth place in the finals and 13th overall. Other strong Brit performances came from Will Longden (31st at Kaprun, 15th overall) and Dan Atherton (14th Kaprun, 16th overall). Next year should be a corker…