MSA

A bit unlucky with the DH this weekend. Had some mechanical issues in both qualifying and racing. I qualified in 9th, which was okay, and my race run was going well (6th fastest at the split) but a rear flat took care of that! I sprinted my butt off though and dragged my bike through the bottom half of the course and finished 16th.

4X was a different story! I qualified 6th (I slipped a pedal in my quali run) so I had a tough first heat, but I made it through the semis to the finals. I ended up finishing 2nd!! I'm pretty happy with that. Props to Joanna Petterson from the Republic of South Africa for nabbing her first ever World Cup podium (5th). Sweet night of racing!

1st - Anneke Beerten
2nd - Fionn Griffiths
3rd - Jill Kintner
4th - Mio Suemasa
5th - Joanna Petterson

MSA

Been busy since the adventures in Morzine. We took off last minute back to Champery to catch up with my buddy Niki Gudex and to do some photo shoots. The riding over there was good. The trails in the bike park were loads better than the World Cup track. It's too bad we didn't get to race on one of those.

After that we headed to Zurich to grab our flights over to Mont Ste Anne where we are now. It has been great here so far. The weather was perfect on Tuesday when we did a little tourist day around old Quebec City. The World Cup DH track is it's usual self for the most part - fast, extremely rough and exhausting. They did however change one of the woods sections. It runs in the same direction, they just made it wider and filled it with berms. I'm having fun up there pinning it! Had to stop after 4 practice runs today. I felt like my arms were going to fall off my bars at any given second!

4X qualifying is tonight. I did a bit of practice yesterday and the track is good. All the jumps are pretty kicky though so you have to be careful. I'll let you know how it goes.

Morzine

Just been kicking back and enjoying some down time in between World Cups this week in Morzine. It has been great. There are a few riders hanging out here including Scarlet Hagen and "Little H" (Tracy Hannah). The 3 of us have been having having a laugh on the DH tracks and Tracy just turned 19 yesterday so we had a bit of a girl's night out and b-day party for the little one. It was pretty fun. Cheers to Scarlett for pulling all stops and borrowing a sweet car for us all to tour around in. Not quite the WRX she is used to but a beast none the less! Everyone seems to know that car in this town too. Let's just say it's got character. The night was good. Filip Polc was our token male for the evening and was a hit with the group of french girls playing ball games at 11pm in the town square! Of course we all joined in.

Needless to say Morzine has been a laugh! Off to Zurich this weekend to secure the van before we head it out to Quebec for some more World Cup action.

4X Finals

Well, finals were a bit wet and crazy today. There was a HUGE downpour just as racing started and we actually had to stop racing for a while to let the rain pass as it was unsafe for riders. After about 15minutes of sheet rain it did eventually stop, although the damage was already done to the track! The corners were well slippy and some jumps were soft...not to mention the MASSIVE puddle in the last berm before the 50m flat sprint to the finish.

Semi Finals went well and after a good gate and solid first turn I followed 2nd place qualifier Racheal (?) from Switzerland through to the finish and on to the final. Finals however were a bit of a different story. With Jill Kintner, Mio Suemasa, Racheal and myself in the gate I knew I was going to have to get a solid start and good first turn to stay in the top 3. Gate was okay but by the first turn Kintner and I were beside each other and began what would be a series of leans and shoves between us. Most of the way down Jill and I battled it out leaving it open for Racheal to pull a lead on us. I thought I was going down a few times but managed to keep things rubber side down. I lost Jill however and she sprinted up past Racheal to finish first. I couldn't quite catch the Swiss BMXer myself and came across the line in 3rd. It was a good race!
Kintner now leads the series after Anneke had a rough race finishing fourth and losing the leader's spot.

Huge shout out to Catherine Pendrel who kicked some butt today in the XC. She started the day in 58th position but finished the grueling XC event in 13th! Jill, Lee and I gave it our all chasing her around the track and cheering whenever possible. We were all pretty stoked for kika's best ever World Cup result.

Qualifying

Qualifying went okay today. I have suffered a bit of a back injury out here riding these past few days. I tweaked something in my low back on my first DH practice run yesterday so I have been taking it very easy these last two days. I managed to get in two 4X practice runs before qualifying. I guess it worked for me. I qualified 3rd. Jill Kintner qualified 1st followed by a Swiss rider in second (I apologise I can't remember her name) I was 3rd and I believe Anneke Beerten was 4th. Melissa Buhl had a big crash in qualifying that has put her out of racing (too bad, Buhly is a quick rider!). Racing is tomorrow night after the World Cup XC. Should be a good one. My parents are coming out to watch from the UK. It is always nice to have family support behind me when I am racing!

Catherine Pendrel is out here racing too from Canada. I forgot that my fellow Norco teammate would be here racing the XC. I think she is going to make use of our pits here tomorrow for warm up. She's been enjoying the XC I think. Should be good to have us all there training together. Tomorrow is a busy day for both of us!

Practice Starts

We are on our way now for the first day of practice! The course looks a bit better since it had a chance to dry out. We did the full course walk yesterday. We are just waiting now today for the UCI Technical Delegate (Helen Mortimer) to clear the course and open it for practice. The track was in need of some serious catch netting and padding, so I think Helen was up there early this morning making sure some changes were made before we all start hurling ourselves down it in a few hours! Should be fun.

Champery Track

Okay.... here's the scoop. The track is not the gnarliest thing I have ever seen, nor is it totally unridable. For sure in the wet it will be a challenge simply because it is so steep. Some parts of the course are at about a 25% gradient! I don't mean just the occasional 20 foot section, I mean full wood sections 200-300m at a time over off-camber roots and unforgiving muddy berms. Even after these sections the rest of the track is ridiculously steep. I am a little disappointed that there appears to only be 1 line down the track really as well. It also lacks any real technical challenges with the only technical aspect being the steepness of the course. I am sure at some point this week most of us will take a brief visit to the catch netting lining the track. Lets just hope it stays dry! The thunder clouds are building now though...we'll see what happens.

Champery

Rolled into Champery late yesterday. The weather wasn't great in Chamonix (the mountains were covered in clouds) so we decided not to stay. When we first arrived we were a bit confused as to which lift they would be using for the WC. The one in town looked a bit daunting - just a one-up-one-down cable car that had wires disappearing into the clouds at about a 45degree angle! Turns out that was the wrong lift and a quick 1km trip out of town took us to a huge parking lot and a chairlift equally as steep, but with enough room to host the huge World Cup village for this triple crown event. There are over 70 UCI teams en route here. 5000 people are already booked into this town and the accomodation is sold out now! Even the campsite is crammed. But turning up early paid off and Tommy is safely parked close to the finish area and awaiting the arrival of Mum, Dad, Jaymie and our chief mechanic - Lee!
We are going to take a slow treck up the steep mountain today and see what all the hype is about. We have heard all kinds of stories/rumours about this track including:
"This is the gnarliest track I have ever seen!"
"They had a race here a couple of weeks ago and half the field refused to race!"
"One section is totally unridable."

I guess we will just have to wait and see. I will try to keep this blog updated with track info and photos when I have them.