All you need to know about the 2018 World Cup DH season

Benjamin Haworth

Still three months to go... ARGH!

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Everything you need to know about the 2018 UCI World Cup DH that starts in March. Dates, venues, telly info, favourites, predictions, speculation and gossip.

2017 was a stellar year for downhill World Cup racing. Although the season started with something along the lines of false start with outsider Alexandre Fayolle winning a heavily weather-afflicted race at Lourdes after an hype-tastic 29er-filled build-up, the rest of the season was completely fascinating, exciting and brilliant.

Remember the mud-pit fiasco at Fort William? Remember Rachel Atherton putting her dislocated shoulder back into place during practice? Remember the hardtail protest at Leogang’s supposedly too-easy track? Remember Aaron Gwin doing the impossible at Mont-Sainte-Anne? Remember Tahnée Seagrave duking it out with Myriam Nicole right to the very end?

2018 UCI DH World Cup dates

  1. April 21-22: Lošinj, Croatia
  2. June 2-3: Fort William, Scotland
  3. June 9-10: Leogang, Austria
  4. July 7-8: Val di Sole, Italy
  5. July 14-15: Vallnord, Andorra
  6. August 11-12: Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada
  7. August 25.26: La Bresse, France

Some ill-advised predictions

There are some things that you can be sure of: it will be live on Red Bull TV, Claudio will be doing course previews, Rob Warner will shout “insane” a lot, people will moan about the difficulty of the tracks, the women’s World Cup DH will be the best racing of 2018, Greg Minnaar will be in the running again, as will Aaron Gwin, it’s almost all in Europe again, Loic Bruni and Miranda Miller are your current World Champs.

Some key team moves: Danny Hart is now on Madison Saracen, Amaury Pierron is now on Commençal Vallnord, Brook MacDonald is now on Mondraker, Charlie Hatton is now on Trek Factory Racing, Ed Masters is now on Pivot Cycles, Matt Simmonds will not be on Madison Saracen, Greg Williamson will not be on Cube.

Here’s some speculation for you then…

There will simultaneously be more 29ers being raced and less hype about them. We’ve done all that now. Tall guys like ’em. End of, pretty much.

Adam Brayton will get on a podium.

So will Brook MacDonald.

Danny Hart will win at least one round.

Greg Minnaar will win the Men’s World Cup overall title.

Tahnée Seagrave will win the Women’s World Cup overall title.

It will all come down the the last round at the relatively unfamiliar La Bresse track.