THROWBACK THURSDAY: CHECKING IN ON 33-TIME WORLD CUP RACE WINNER, JULIEN ABSALON

Two months ago, Nino Schurter tied the World Cup race win record of Julien Absalon. Right now, they both have 33 World Cup wins in the Elite Men’s XC ranks. Nino is hoping to break Julien’s record now, but he still has to pull it off. He’ll have his next chance on the weekend of June 11-12 in Leogang, Austria.

We wondered what Julien was up to lately and took a look at his Instagram page. We found this post from a few months back. It’s great to see that Julien is still riding a lot. We bet he’d still be extremely strong if he got back into racing again, but we don’t know if he’d still be a threat for another World Cup win today. It would be fun to see, nevertheless.

Julien and Nino were archrivals on the World Cup and World Championship circuit for years, while Julien was racking up a total of seven overall World Cup XC titles and 5 UCI World Championships. Nino also has a total of seven World Cup XC titles today, but Nino also has nine Elite Men’s XC World Championships.

Nino has three Olympic medals—one bronze, one silver, and one gold. Julien may only have two Olympic medals, but they’re both gold.

Here’s a post from Julien’s Instagram page from six months ago.