Tuesday, July 27, 2010

UCI DH World Cup, Champery Saturday

Leov

Minnaar

Peaty

BrenDOG


Word Up,
We headed over to Switzerland on Sat to watch the highly anticipated World Cup Race in Champery. As has been the case over the last few months, rain seems to get in the way when planning biking trips and the race qualifying on Friday was no exception. Looking at the video on Dirt website it looked at times like a raft would have been better equipped to deal with the conditions.

It seemed like most of the riders would have preferred the rain to continue on Saturday, in the hope of maintaining speed. Unfortunately it didn't and by the time we arrived at the top of the course amidst the clouds, the track was drying into a thick slurry of sticky bogg - the kind of shit you lost your wellies in when you were a kid! Proper Crud people.

We arrived, after getting off the giant gondala and wandering around with 10 other folk completely lost with no signs to the Race, around mid table - seeing Mick Hannah leave the Gate around 14:55. It was only then, when walking down the track you got a sense of just how Feckin STEEP this thing was - with some HUGE double drop jumps, that most riders were clearing and surfing the sea of shit beneath their tyres. Cant emphasise enough how difficult, technical and fast this course was, especially with the conditions. I think it was Greg Minnaar who described it as a Scalextric track, based on the giant grooves which had appeared. But he obviously had a big dog that dumped on his track as well.

Anyway, it was a great atmosphere and brilliant to watch all Big Guns not being phased by the conditions. Well done to Gee for the win and Brendog in 3rd. C'mon Peaty - lets have a podium this season!

Results:
1. Gee Atherton
2. Greg Minnaar
3. Brendan Fairclough
4. Spagnola

Here are some images from the day and Wazza shot some vid which we'll cut later and post on. This was definitely Dirrty Summer. Dan


No comments:

Post a Comment