It's been a long season, and yet it's not over - on the contrary. The last race of the Enduro World Series has been held in Finale Ligure since the series was founded and demands everything from its participants every year - technically, physically and mentally. This time will be no different, and so the athletes will face long transfer stages as well as mostly new, but also exhausting downhill stages on the enduro menu. Tough counter-climbs are not uncommon, after which the riders' technical skills are immediately in demand again.

Frenchman Damien Oton (Devinci Enduro Racing) was the fastest downhill rider on both days. Two stage wins and a seventh place as the worst stage are the recipe for relegating last year's winner Martin Maes (BEL - GT Factory Racing) to second place. As a result, Oton moves up to fifth place in the overall standings - one ahead of Maes.

Damien Oton chases through your rock garden on stage four.

Hill or Dailly?

The suspense over who will take home the World Series trophy is high throughout the race. Although former downhill mud artist Sam Hill (AUS - Chain Reaction Cycles/Mavic) is 110 points ahead of Frenchman Adrien Dailly, the sport of enduro is notorious for the fact that defects and crashes at the last moment can still turn the classification.

Both title contenders give it their all - but Hill gives it a little more and so, with third place in the final, he clinches the overall victory he had hoped for. Dailly finished fourth behind Hill and remained second overall. Somewhat behind him, Greg Callaghan (Cube Action Team) took third place overall. The Irishman was in the lead for a long time, but increasingly lost ground in the second half of the season. Even with his solid sixth place in the finale, he was unable to change the standings. Nevertheless, third place is a nice success for the young Cube rider.

Hill not only wins the overall classification, he even makes some mountain bike history. Even when the Australian was dominating the downhill sport, he used flat pedals, and he still does today, when all the top riders are using the more efficient clipless pedals. Hill obviously doesn't seem to complain about any loss of efficiency, making him the first rider to win the Enduro World Series on the "inefficient" platform pedals.

Sam Hill shoots through the second-last corner of the season and to overall victory.

Chapuis unlucky again

After René Wildhaber (Trek) took a few steps back in his racing gear and is now riding sporadically in the masters category, a Swiss enduro rider, Maxime Chapuis (Specialized), seems to have made it back into the top 20. In his first full World Series season, Chapuis managed to finish 23rd overall, despite the fact that the material luck was not always on his side. This was also the case in Finale, when he had problems with the derailleur during the race and lost the derailleur completely on the final descent. Nevertheless, Chapuis finished 26th

Maxime Chapuis: Without chain and changer through the many spectators.

Timothée Oppliger (Norco Enduro Racing) finished as the second-best Swiss rider, achieving his best result in the Enduro World Series to date. This is all the more respectable when you consider that Oppliger is not a professional but an ambitious amateur athlete who spends most of his time working. With 48th place, he leaves several enduro pros behind him.

Small successes - big joy: Timothée Oppliger rides his top 50 rank into the dry.

Missing the podium by the blink of an eye

In the women's race, the usual picture emerged as in almost every race. Cecile Ravanel (Commencal Vallnord Enduro Team), who was already the overall winner of the Enduro World Series before the race in Finale Ligure, also dominated the last race ahead of her compatriot Isabeau Courdurier (FRA - Sunn).

Untouchable: Cecile Ravanel wins the seventh of the eight EWS races in Finale
.

And third place? A supposedly clear-cut affair on the first day of racing, when Scotland's Katy Winton (Trek Factory Enduro Team) was almost forty seconds ahead of Anita Gehrig, began to turn on the second day of racing.

The Swiss Ibis rider turns up the heat on the second day of the race to such an extent that she pushes Winton into fourth place before the final stage. On the sixth stage, Gehrig even rode the fastest stage time, something she had never done before. She is now three seconds ahead of Winton in third place, and the Swiss rider also attacks again on the last stage. Nevertheless, Winton is around three seconds faster on this stage, and so Anita Gehrig's narrow lead becomes an even narrower gap in the daily standings. She lost third place to the Scot by just five hundredths of a second. Even her very first best time couldn't help her disappointment, as she had to make do with fourth place for the fourth time this season.

Anita Gehrig is still 40 seconds behind third place on the first day. In the end it was only five hundredths of a second.

Carolin Gehrig (Ibis Cycles Enduro Race Team) is in sixth place after the first day of the race. She also turned up the heat on the second day. She overtakes the Canadian Casey Brown (Trek Factory Enduro Team) ahead of her and is well ahead of her before the final stage. Nevertheless, Gehrig puts her last ounces of energy into the race with the aim of setting the fastest time on the notorious final descent "Downhill Uomini" to Varigotti. She is very fast, but the Swiss rider doesn't quite make it. Only Isabeau Courdurier is even faster.

Full throttle on the final stage: Carolin Gehrig goes "all in".

In the overall standings, Anita and Carolin Gehrig move up one place each to fourth and fifth. The two will start the new season with these numbers in 2018.

Resulate EWS #8 Finale Ligure
EWS overall ranking

Eight stops - four new locations

The Enduro World Series will once again comprise eight races in 2018. The series kicks off on March 25 in Lo Barnechea, Chile. It will then continue northwards, where the enduro riders will contest the second race a week later in Manizales, Colombia. The third and fourth stops are also new: the races will also be held over two days in Olargues - Montagnes du Caroux, in France and in the Austrian-Slovenian border region of Petzen-Jamnica.

In the second half of the season, the organizers are relying on the familiar and proven venues. The World Series year continues on July 21 with the Alpine classic in La Thuile (ITA). The only one-day race in the series will take place on August 12. The enduro race in Whistler kicks off the Crankworks Festival there.

After a good month's break, the race series visits Spain. The penultimate race will be held in Ainsa on September 22 and 23. Just one week later, the season ends for the sixth time in Finale Ligure.

www.enduroworldseries.com