Mont Saint Anne Course Walk - UCI World Cup 2012
Jun 20, 2012
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 There's a fair bit of this on the new re-route up top: turf. If it rained overnight, there'd be roosting action here unlike anything that's been seen on the WC circuit since the first year at La Bresse. It gives the track a distinctly old school start before diving into the rock filled woods the riders both love and loath. |
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| A+ score on this re-route at the top, eliminating the lamest first corner ever; you can see the old line with the massive rock at the apex of it. Now it's a turf to a tighter left with a mini berm in it. |
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| M6 Motorway here now at the top section of the track as the course veers away from the berm bashing goodness of the last three years and goes full on old school down the neighboring piste. It's more or less straight as a string, full throttle, go as fast as your balls will let you for what seems like forever. "I'm going to take a minute off last year's time with this track," chortled a gleeful Claire Buchar. |
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| Once into the woods it's business as usual: wheel wrecking rocks and loads of them. |
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| "I don't ever really get tired of tracks like this. Every year there's something new: an erosion line, a shift in the woods... something that keeps it fresh." -Greg Minnnaar. |
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| Huck to rubbish. It's a pity that this portion of the track - at one time an intimidating line, now a simple huck into a sketchy pavered berm - didn't get the old school make-over that the upper portion received. |
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| The motorway below the first woods is the same as it ever was, although the curve into the left woods below is a bit flatter. |
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| The last vestige of single track on the this beautiful monster of a track appears to finally be getting widened out by track designers. Even last year this line was so tight riders had to watch it a bit to keep from clipping bars. Now? Not so much... |
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| More motorway and then into the axe heads of death right hand sweeper 30 seconds or so above the hip section under the gondola. It looks tame at this point, but more tires were blown here than almost anywhere else on the track in previous years. |
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| The fadeaway right rolled immediately into this fadeaway left. Erosion's taken such a toll here that now the riders will be hugging the tape as inside as they can in order to gain entry onto a freshly built flat turn that leads into the hip under the chair. This line looks smooth, but it's tight, and as riders cut the inside, look for rocks to start creeping to the surface. |
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| Another track re-route, this one below the infamous hip; rather than veer left and then straight, the track is veering right before hooking left to careen into the woods for the main rock garden. |
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| Duncan Riffle checking out a rock strewn line below the hip. |
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| The infamous rock garden. These slabs may look smooth... |
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| ...but there are plenty of ridges to grab chainrings as racers bob and weave through this section. |
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| It's bone dry here for a change. Mostly. But in the deep woods, there's still some loamy hero dirt. |
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| With no 4X to cater to, the track now rolls straight-away through the old 4X rock garden before veering down and finishing on the old 4X track. It's fine for 4X bikes as the track rolls to the finish; but it will be damn hard for exhausted racers to mash through that last bit. |
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| Velirium - the bike festival attached to the Mt St Anne World Cup - is all about bikes. There's a gorgeous looking pump track under construction here for a pump track competition on Saturday. |
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| Danny Hart's rocking the number 4 plate after Ft William. "I wish I'd turned it on a bit sooner, because I'm in the same place right now that I was last year at this time. But it is what it is. And we'll see where I am after Sunday." |
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| It's so dry it seems almost ludicrous to be cutting tires, but the Atherton's mechanics are hard at it. Mt St Anne has a reputation for wet every bit as much as Fort William does. It may be bone dry right now (with the exception of those few sections of hero dirt deep in the woods), but it doesn't take much rain here for riders to be calling for spikes. |
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| A day like today is a welcome one for riders; it's a down day. Time to go spin out the legs and not stress too much about the race. Minnaar's more stressed about having a proper seat angle right now on his XC bike than he is about the track. But then again, he's raced here every year since 1998; for him, this track is an old friend. |
Photos by
Colin Meagher
