After a good start, Schurter leads the seven-man lead group, which also includes Fabian Giger, Lukas Flückiger and Florian Vogel. Schurter returnee Julien Absalon (FRA) drops the chain from the sprocket at the start and finds himself out of reach of the leaders. Schurter, however, will fare no better. Towards the end of the first lap, he runs out of air on his front wheel, forcing the world champion to take a short break in the technical zone.

While Schurter starts to catch up in 15th position, Giger sets the pace for the leading group. He was replaced on the second lap by Ondrej Cink (CZE), who set off alone on a long solo ride. One lap later, Schurter is also back in the six-man chasing group with Giger and Vogel. Due to a harmless crash on the fourth lap, Giger literally falls out of the leading group, but remains not far behind. Just behind him, Absalon feels his way towards the leading group. Just before he, with Giger in tow, has the group around Schurter within striking distance, the chain on Absalon's bike jams, which throws him back again.In the last of the six laps, the group with Nino Schurter, Maxime Marotte (FRA), Stephane Tempier (FRA) and Gerhard Kerschbaumer (ITA) slowly closes in on the leading Cink. Schurter is the first of the group to catch the Czech on the descent and immediately attacks on the following climb. However, Cink does not give in so easily and closes the gap to Schurter again. In the last forest section, the Grisons rider literally flies over the trails so that the Czech champion can no longer follow him. The resulting lead of a few meters is enough for Schurter to celebrate his third World Cup victory of the season. "After the defect, I no longer believed I could win until the last lap. It was also pretty tough here at altitude," admitted Schurter.Julien Absalon needed too much energy in his race to catch up. The two-time Olympic champion didn't have enough energy to make it into the group riding for victory after the second chain jam. He finished the race in eighth place with a respectable performance. Fabian Giger and Florian Vogel are delighted to be back among the world's best mountain bikers, finishing sixth and seventh respectively. "I was alone a lot in the wind and when the group came from behind, I crashed and was alone again. That took a lot of energy. Nevertheless, I'm satisfied, the altitude training before the World Cup helped a lot," says Giger.

Rankings Worldcup 2013, #4 Vallnord/AND, men:
1. Nino Schurter (SUI)	1.27.07	+0.00
2. Ondrej Cink (CZE)	1.27.13	+0.06
3rd Stéphane Tempier (FRA)	1.27.18	+0.11
4. Maxime Marotte (FRA)	1.27.38	+0.31
5th Gerhard Kerschbaumer (ITA)	1.27.52	+0.45
6th Fabian Giger (SUI)	1.27.58	+0.51
7th Florian Vogel (SUI)	1.28.22	+1.15
8th Julien Absalon (FRA)	1.28.26	+1.19
9th Miguel Martinez (FRA)	1.28.32	+1.25
10th Manuel Fumic (GER)	1.28.43	+1.36
12th Mathias Flückiger (SUI)	1.29.18	+2.11
14th Ralph Näf (SUI)	1.29.29	+2.22
22nd Lukas Flückiger (SUI)	1.30.26	+3.19
27th Martin Gujan (SUI)	1.31.25	+4.18
29th Thomas Litscher (SUI)	1.31.49	+4.42
33rd Patrik Gallati (SUI)	1.32.17	+5.10
41st Marcel Wildhaber (SUI)	1.33.32	+6.25
42nd Daniel Eymann (SUI)	1.33.37	+6.30
55th Sepp Freiburghaus (SUI)	1.37.16	+10.09
60th Lucien Besancon (SUI)	1.38.19	+11.12
DNF. Nicola Rohrbach (SUI)
DNS. Martin Fanger (SUI)