Ronan Dunne put things in stark terms back in May.
“I don’t normally look at the times, but this time I did,” he said, speaking before his final run at the UCI World Cup Downhill race in Poland.
“I saw the time Bruni scored and I thought, ‘okay, let’s get to it, we’re not bluffing.’ I was ready to fight someone. “I had the mindset that I’d be going for a helicopter trip or coming down in first. We didn’t take the helicopter trip, we took the win.”
The helicopter trip Dunne is referring to is being airlifted off the mountain if things went wrong. Instead, he beat world number one and current series leader Loic Bruni by 0.064 of a second to land the first World Cup victory of his career. It was a stunning success and now, months later, he is third overall before the final round this weekend in Mount Saint Anne, Canada.
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“I can’t believe it, it is pretty crazy,” he explains. “Last year I got 12th, which was the best overall position for an Irish rider ever. So it’d be pretty cool to top off with a third place, or even a top five.”
The Mondraker Factory Racing competitor has had a breakthrough season. He won the Red Bull Hardline race in Australia in February, raced to that World Cup win in May, and then scooped another Red Bull Hardline event in Wales in June.
Each result is a big triumph in downhill mountain bike racing, which sees riders speed, skid and even soar down highly technical, highly dangerous courses on runs that last several minutes.
Dunne describes the Hardline races as more extreme, with bigger jumps and greater risks. But while those two victories were of big satisfaction to him, the World Cup is what really stands out.
“Winning that was definitely pretty special. You can say you’re the fastest in the world on that day, which is pretty cool. It’s just so hard to win one of those races.
“It’s given me real hope for the overall series,” he adds, referring to future years. “Now you’ve won one, you can be a contender for more races. It’s been pretty sick.”
Dunne’s win came months after another by fellow Irishman Oisin O’Callaghan. The success late last year in Snowshoe, West Virginia, was the first-ever elite downhill World Cup victory by an Irish rider.
Former world junior champion O’Callaghan finished 0.496 seconds ahead of Dunne on that occasion, who nabbed second.
They are 21 and 22 years of age respectively and are two of the most exciting young talents in the sport.
Red Bull had been paying attention and, following Dunne’s World Cup victory this year, agreed a contract with him.
“I’ve always adored the brand, really,” Dunne explains. “It’s been a dream of mine for the past few years to become one of their athletes.”
The brand has huge clout in mountain biking and backs some of the biggest names across a range of sports. Securing the contract should make a considerable difference to his career in the coming years.
World Cup leader Bruni is also part of their stable. He’s a big fan of Dunne.
“Congrats to Ronan for his amazing season. It’s been really cool to see him progress and get better,” he says. “He has always been quite a loose unit, just sending it [throwing caution to the wind] and going for wins.
“This year, changing programme, I think he understood how to make race runs a bit more consistent, and a little bit more efficient.
“It’s been cool to see he had it in him. His mindset was always quite fierce. When he won his first World Cup this year in Poland I was second by a small margin. It was really cool to be battling with him in that race and battling the whole season, pretty much.”
Bruni is well clear in the overall standings and now looks to have the World Cup sewn up. Dunne sits third, with his closest rival very close to him.
With double points on offer for this final round in Canada, he knows a big clash is brewing over the weekend.
“It’s kind of all or nothing, really,” he says. “The guy in fourth place, Finn Iles, is a Canadian and won there previously. He is only seven points behind me, so it should be a pretty tight battle.
“First is secured, Loic Bruni has won that. And second place is pretty far ahead. But third and fourth is where our last battle is.
“So to be considered in that category is pretty amazing. If I make third in the overall, it’d be crazy to say you are the third best mountainbiker in the world.
“That would be pretty cool.”
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