France’s Julie Bresset took gold in the women’s Mountain Biking race, completing six laps of the rocky, hilly, five-km course in 1:30:52.
Bresset told London 2012.com, “I’m very happy. It’s amazing to win today. I hoped to win a medal and a gold medal is unbelievable.
“I started well, I took the front of the race and I managed it well. ‘When I had a gap I told myself: ‘Now, I should go’. I led until the finish and I’m very content.”
Bresset led from the end of the first lap, keeping an advantage of a few seconds over the pursuing riders. On lap three she formed a breakaway with Germany’s Sabine Spitz and USA’s Georgia Gould, but the two could not keep up as Bresset stretched a five-second lead on lap three into a one-minute lead by lap six, the final lap.
The first riders of the chase group, Russia’s Irina Kalentieva and Switzerland’s Esther Suss, finished 1:41 and 1:54 back, respectively
Bresset, 23, was French Junior champion in 2009 and national champion in 2010. The gold she won in this, her first Olympics, is also the first for the French women’s mountain biking team.
Great Britain’s Amy Last led the most of the first lap, much to the joy of the very vocal fans, with defending Olympic champion Sabine Spits of Germany behind her. Bresset passed Spitz and then Last to take the lead at 15:42 into the race, Canada’s Catharine Pendrel and America’s Georgia Gould filled out the top five. Spitz dropped to fourth briefly, then advanced to second,
Gould passed Pendrell for third early in the second lap, and the top three riders—Bresset, Spitz, and Gould—opened a 30-second gap on the rest of the riders.
Bresset’s break came halfway through the fourth lap in the downhill section of boulders called a “rock garden.” Spitz took a wrong line, jammed her front wheel, stood up almost on end and fell to the side, causing Gould to comer to a halt. Both riders remounted and rode on, but Bresset, seeing them stop, hit the gas and broke free.
For a while it seemed the pursuing pair might make up the lost ground—they were faster on the short, steep hills—but Bresset was too smooth through the technical sections and opened a lead of 33 seconds on lap five, which she doubled by the end of the race.
Bresset grabbed a French Tricoleur offered by a fan and crossed the finish line waving her nation’s flag.
Sabine Spitz, who won gold in Beijing and bronze in Athens, added silver to her list of achievements, a great performance from the 40-year-old competing against women ten and twenty years younger. Spitz, who started riding at age 22, won her first world championship in 2003, when Julie Bresset was only 14.
Georgia Gould, 32, won America its first mountain-biking medal since 1996 when the sport was introduced at the Atlanta Games. A cyclocross as well as short-track and cross-county rider, Gould has several national championships but had never competed in the Olympics.
