For a long time at Smithfield Regional Park, it looked as if the Swiss could celebrate their 46th World Cup victory in the men's event. Thomas Litscher takes the lead first. After his famously fast first lap, Litscher doesn't let up and rides away from the rest of the competition. But at the start of the third lap, he loses air from his rear tire and because he has only just passed the technical zone, he has to tackle the entire climb and the next descent with this handicap.

So Mathias Flückiger manages to catch up with Litscher from the chasing group and leave him behind on the descent. He had to change his rear wheel and dropped back to seventh place, where he also finished. "Too bad, a chance like that won't come again so quickly. I had great legs and could just ride my rhythm. I already noticed on the first lap that I was losing air, but I was still okay," explained Litscher.Mathias Flückiger now leads Maxime Marotte by just under 30 seconds, while behind him Absalon is working on his comeback. The 33-year-old suffered a defect on the second lap as he set off in pursuit of Litscher. This dropped him back to seventh place, but the record World Cup winner came back.

Flückiger still has 30 seconds on Absalon until halfway through the fourth lap, but then the man from the Vosges rapidly closes the gap. On the next lap, he closed the gap to Flückiger at the highest point of the course and at the end of the fifth lap, he attacked for the first time. Flückiger was able to keep up with this attack, while Maxime Marotte, who was still in contact up to that point, fell back. On the last long climb, however, Flückiger had no chance against Absalon's next attack. "I always struggled in the lower part of the climb," explains Flückiger, who can also live with second place.

"Until yesterday I was still struggling with the climate and the time change. That's why I'm very surprised that it went so well. My goal was to be right at the start and I managed that. I learned a lot from Pietermaritzburg and rode a different rhythm," explained the former u23 world champion, adding: "I had already expected Absalon to come. He was the strongest today, as he was in Pietermaritzburg and before that in Tesserete. He deserved it."

In addition to Nino Schurter, several riders from the Swiss squad are missing in Cairns. Lukas Flückiger broke a toe in a training crash in Pietermaritzburg, Ralph Näf is unable to fit Cairns into his season plans and Florian Vogel has stayed at home due to fatherhood. Although he was on site in Cairns, Matthias Stirnemann crashed so badly in training on Saturday that he had to be treated in hospital for a long time, but probably escaped without any broken bones.

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Rankings World Cup 2014, #2 Cairns AUS, Men:
1. Julien Absalon (FRA)	1.38.22	+0.00
2. Mathias Flückiger (SUI)	1.38.38	+0.16
3rd Maxime Marotte (FRA)	1.38.46	+0.24
4. Daniel McConnell (AUS)	1.38.50	+0.28
5th José Hermida (ESP)	1.38.54	+0.32
6th Sergio Manceton (ESP)	1.39.24	+1.02
7th Thomas Litscher (SUI)	1.40.38	+2.16
8th Ondrej Cink (CZE)	1.41.05	+2.43
9th Stéphane Tempier (FRA)	1.41.18	+2.56
10th Jaroslav Kulhavy (CZE)	1.41.42	+3.20
11th Fabian Giger (SUI)	1.41.45	+3.23
18th Martin Fanger (SUI)	1.41.37	+3.15
22nd Reto Indergand (SUI)	1.44.41	+6.19
26th Nicola Rohrbach (SUI)	1.45.48	+7.26
DNS. Matthias Stirnemann (SUI)	1.47.56	+9.34