MT.ST.ANNE, QUEBEC
Tracy Mosley and Sam Hill took the rainbow stripes yesterday!!. Pretty rad event, but jeeze what a big week. Think over the 6 days of practice, we had a heat wave, dust, rain, humidity, fog, downpours, rivers running down the course, sloppy mud, drier mud, more rain, and other stuff. Lot going on , lots of changes, track was different nearly every run. Biggest holes too. Crazy how tiring that run was; weeklong battle, a few crashes, and the slow muddy track.
For race run I was in the start watching the rain fall. Not that rain is bad, mud is fun, but Not being able to see is my least favorite thing ever!!! I suck at pulling tear offs, and forgot to do it in the one spot I needed to, and rode tenative. Oh well, main thing yesterday was riding aggressive and not braking, but it is really difficult to do in such conditions. I had a good time, but not that speedy of a run compared to what I was capable of. Saint brakes were working too good:).
I still took a top 10, which is actually decent for my first year downhilling. For sure need to build up my tolerance to full runs and speed in rougher conditions. Congrats to USA teammate Leigh Donavan- 8th!! not bad for a part time racer/mom/business owner. Once a World Champion, always a racerhead I suppose:) Best fairytale ending for Tracy though, she smashed everyone, after 15+ years of trying, so a monumental day for the Brits. Frenchie 2nd, Ragot 3rd.
Sam Hill's win was a pretty good story too, but strange. He was out with a busted ACL early in the year, missed most of the world cup, recovered then busted his shoulder, missed more world cups, then comes back last week, keeps his speed under the radar, and straight killed it here in St Anne.
I was kinda hoping for a tighter battle between Peaty, minnaar, Gwin, etc, but sam had a dry-ish run and the last few guys down got a substantial amount of rain falling on em. Stevie Smith rode out of his skull, and took a 2nd for Canada, which is his best result. Got an evil bike up there on the box.
Kinda hard to believe we gotta go race in NY again this weekend, but it'll be good to take this ass kicking and turn it into some more speed. DH Mike from whiteface is running us down some 5k dh track- 8 min or something. Bit painful, but whatever. Last race of the season.. Till then....