surgery and then took time off to recover .
The WMX title that year was won by French Kawasaki rider Livia Lancelot , a fierce competitor who had , interestingly , been one of Prumm ’ s main rivals eight or nine years earlier . Duncan finished third overall in the WMX series the following season , in 2017 , closer to the coveted No . 1 spot , but still not quite reaching the heights she was clearly capable of . Duncan arrived at the sixth and final round of the 2017 series at Villars-sous-Ecot , in France , trailing Dutch rider Nancy Van de Ven by just two points and , with just five points to separate the top four riders , anything was still possible . Duncan was again on target to win the world crown , but that ’ s when everything went horribly wrong for her in the first of her two races that weekend as a steep and muddy section of the track became impossible for the riders and the race had to be abandoned . Duncan had been out in front , with a massive 20-second lead over her main title rival at that stage , Italy ’ s Kiara Fontanesi , when , on the final lap , she had to take evasive action to avoid a group of lapped riders who had become stuck on the steep hillside and Duncan became
wedged under a trackside hoarding . Duncan had quickly managed to recover her way back to finish sixth before the race was finally stopped . However , instead of the race being wound back a lap prior to the stoppage ( when , remember , Duncan had been leading ) and a result declared from that , as normally happens , it was controversially decided to give the race win to Fontanesi , who happened to be leading at the moment the race was finally halted , despite so many of the riders by that stage having illegally cut the course to avoid the hill . That result had dropped her fourth in the world standings and nine points behind series leader Van de Ven , four points behind Lancelot and seven behind Fontanesi , with just one more race the following day to wrap up the series . Duncan convincingly won the final race that Sunday , crossing the line a whopping 46 seconds ahead of race runner-up Lancelot , the defending world champion from 2016 , but Duncan ’ s 6-1 score-card from the weekend was not quite enough and she eventually had to settle for a world ranking of No . 3 ( actually third equal , a position shared with Van de Ven , but
54 KIWI RIDER