29-year-old Beerten, who has been chasing that rainbow jersey for a decade, was a clear winner of the women Finals ahead of Great Britain’s Fionn Griffiths and France’s Céline Gros, USA’s Melissa Buhl ending at a frustrating 4th place.
On the men’s side, Prokop managed to survive a bad crash in the upper part of the course along Roger Rinderknecht from Switzerland’s and Joost Wichman, also from the Netherlands but they all managed to catch up Australia’s favorite Jared Graves who fell shortly after them.
Beerten had a hard time to fully understand what she just achieved when answering the first questions from the press. “This is amazing, I can’t believe it, I have been fighting so hard for this in past years and now I finally reached my career goal,” she said with tears in her eyes. “It has been a tough race, the course is really challenging but I kept on pushing as hard as possible. There were some hot situations during that final but I guess I was a little luckier than the other girls,” added Beerten who became the first Dutch woman ever to capture a World Title in an Elite MTB event.
“The organizers did a great job with this course. I think it’s good to get away from the BMX format and be closer to the downhill format. In fact, I used a new full-suspension Trek bike today. I didn’t go for a downhill bike but this one was perfect. Now I’ll have a great celebration.”
On the other side, Prokop was not so convinced by the course setting which was too far in his opinion from the usual 4 X format. “I didn’t like it too much, there were more crashes than usual, but I did well so I can’t complain too much,” the Czech said afterwards. “I had a pretty consistent season so far with a few podium finishes but this is my first major victory this year. I skipped the last World Cup downhill at Val di Sole because I took part in the BMX pre-Olympic race at London,” also said the former two-time World Champion.
Thanks to Rinderknecht’s silver medal – his 3rd in his career – the Swiss team took over alone the lead in the medal standings with three gold, one silver and one bronze medals.
PkL |
4 X races – Gold medals for Anneke Beerten and Michael Prokop. 
