Rachel Atherton wraps the championship during timed practice at Windham.

The UCI Mountain Bike World Cup’s finals are still ahead of us, but there is already an overall winner: Rachel Atherton is this year’s downhill champion. The Briton was more than nine seconds ahead and clinched her fifth consecutive World Cup victory at the next-to-last UCI race in Windham (USA). An historical day for Rachel – also because her childhood idol Missy Giove raced this weekend for the first time in years.

After only six rounds, one thing is certain: Rachel Atherton is the overall winner of the UCI Mountain Bike DH World Cup 2015. She takes over the title from her compatriot Manon Carpenter. After her victory in Windham last weekend she scores 1,410 points and thus leads the UCI ranking just ahead of Manon Carpenter with 899 points. Even if Manon would win the qualifying and finals at the last stop in Val di Sole, she would not be able to steal Rachel’s crown.

It was literally a hot race in Windham: the very warm weather made the short, but very intense track dust-dry. The technical parts, jumps and high-speed passages were the right mixture for Rachel. She finished 9 seconds faster than Manon Carpenter and perfectly completed her season. Thus, Continental equipped the two fastest women with high-performance BlackChili compound tires. Another highlight this weekend was Missy Giove’s participation. Rachel’s childhood idol completed her first UCI race after several years. Rachel said: “I was so starstruck! Watching my GoPros with Missy was surreal, cheers for being badass Missy! It’s been such an awesome weekend, such a fun race and I’m so so stoked with today’s win and the Overall.” You can watch her run here: http://bit.ly/Rachels_Run.

<p=>The GT Factory Team was celebrating as it scored the “Team of the Day“ award and now is leading the pack to finish the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup as the best downhill team. Also other Conti athletes are in a very good position after the Windham race: Manon Carpenter might finish second this season and Gee Atherton is still able to achieve a top 5 placement. For the Cross Country athletes, Val di Sole will be a hard battle between Swiss Nino Schurter and Frenchman Julien Absalon. The defending champion is still in the race as he is only 190 points behind leading athlete Schurter. =

Here are the current standings:=

DHI Men Elite

DHI Women Elite

DHI TEAM

XCO Men Elite

XCO Women Elite