Event Previews & Reviews from Les 2 Alpes

With a busy festive fortnight coming to an end, we bring you a rundown of the highlights of the last two weeks.

For the nineteenth edition the competitors were greeted by three days of good weather and perfect biking conditions. The fastest riders hit speeds well over 100km/h and covered the twenty-five-kilometre-long course in just under thirty minutes.

Saturday saw the first edition of the Les Deux Alpes Defí Vertical – a ski touring race from the town at 1650 metres to the top of the glacier at 3600 metres.

Craig David is undoubtedly the best-known singer Les Deux Alpes has seen perform but the festival saw plenty more great music. This was also the snowiest Rise Festival so far, keeping the skiers and snowboarders happy and helping along the party atmosphere.

This weekend just gone saw the fifth edition of the Deux Alpes Night Snowtrail race. As always it was a well-attended, well-run event, but this year saw the 2015 Trail Running world champion in attendance. Sylvain Court, who is also a two-time French champion, was running in the 20km race.

Saturday afternoon saw the arrival of around 3000 Rise festival-goers in Les Deux Alpes, and it didn’t take long for the party to get underway. Back for the third year running, this time around looks set to be bigger than ever.

On Wednesday, Les Deux Alpes attempted to beat the world record for the largest ever torchlit descent on skis. Thousands of torches were ready, the people from Guinness were there to officiate and count, and a large crowd was gathered on La Toura ready for the ski down in the dark.

The Mountain of Hell MTB race is now in its 17th year and the 2016 edition saw 700 mountain bikers take part from no less than 18 different countries. For the first time this year there was a children's race with 23 competitors taking part, and 16 women also joined the ranks - I was one of them.