May 13/07 10:04 am - Downhill World Cup Vigo

Posted by Editoress on 05/13/07
 

Downhill World Cup #1 Vigo, Spain

Report by Larry Ireland

Photos courtesy Santa Cruz Syndicate

4X & DH Photos by Larry Ireland

Pre-race
Racers hit the hill at 8:30 am (local) this morning for the final practice and timed run sessions, before racing began at noon.  The course was now slippery and wet, which made it quite a different beast from the last few days.  Riders were seen walking the course early, checking out conditions in order to select tires for their timed runs, so that they could compare them to their practice runs on faster-rolling, dry condition tires.

Qualified Canadians for the Final included Claire Buchar (Specialized) in 10th and Tyler Morland in 58th.

Morland, dressed in mud gear, discussed during training how the course may have changed overnight due to the heavy rains.  "With it being Spain, I think it's gonna do well in the rain.  I think it's gonna tack up, and traction fell all night which is nice.  I think it's just something from the beach so it's pretty sandy.  I'm gonna go do a run on mud tires, and then try dry tires in a bit."

Post-race
The Vigo downhill was punctuated by crazy weather, slippery conditions and the longest stay in a hot seat in recent memory. Marc Beaumont came down early after having qualified back in the field, and ended up sitting in the hot seat through the very end. Not even defending World Champion Sam Hill or fastest qualifier Steve Peat could unseat him from his chair.

"My run was pretty good. I everything pretty nice. I just tried to ride smooth and not make any mistakes. You can go off in loads of different shit here, like rocks. I had a good clean run, I'm stoked."

When asked how he felt sitting in the hotseat so long, Beamont said "I was really nervous. I just wanted it to end. I wanted people to come down the hill faster to get the race over with."

Canadian Tyler Morland finished 35th, not bad considering he left the gate in strong winds and hail. "The course was changing a lot. I was excited in the beginning when I was hanging out; the course was dry and looked good. As I stood in line it started to rain real hard and hail on me. With weather like that, what do you do. I went with dry tires, which was a bit of a mistake."

The other Canadian racer who qualified for the final - Claire Buchar - flatted in her race run and ended up 20th.