Gwin felt that🅺 he chose the wrong tire for the conditions on Saturday and was disappointed to concede 18 points to Minnaar, but the main points were up for grabs in the finals on Sunday.
Because of the qualifying result, Gwin started earlier than the main contenders and took the hotseat with a🐼 time of 4:48. It was difficult to know if this time would hold for the next hour as the top 20 men came down the hill, or would they push towards Marc Beaumont's quali🌠fier of 4:42.
The lead started to whittle away and was down to three seconds when Danny Hart (Giant) took to the track and got the gap down to 0.6 seconds. With Minnaar crossing the line with a drivetrain mechanical and eventually finishi🧸ng sixth, it was up to the final two riders from Team GT to knock Gwin from the hotseat, which event🌄ually did not happen.
Gwin took his seventh World Cup win out of 10 starts for Trek World Racing (a𒆙nd a 100 percent podium success rate), with Hart s✤econd and Gee Atherton (GT) third. Gwin's World Cup lead is now 85 points.
"I just rode a smooth run. It was hard to judge, but all I knew was that it needed to be smooth. It was pretty nerve-wracking watching all ꦐthe b♉ig guys coming down, and I started to think a podium was likely, but the win was a real surprise. I'm glad to have finally conquered this amazing track! The fans here have been incredible all week."
A closer look at Gwin's bike
Aaron Gwin's Trek World Racing Team Mechanic, Monkey, gave BikeRadar a tour of the Fort William World Cup winner's downhill bike, a 2012 Trek Sessioꦇn 9.9.
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"W⛎e proved last yeꦦar that this is a good race bike, so there are not really any changes other than the paint scheme for this year," said Monkey. "This bike will be available to consumers at the end of this year."
The most sig😼nificant change to Gwin's rig is a switch to Bontrager tires for this season.
