Fort William World Cup 2011 DH Qualifying Gallery

Internet at Fort William has been spotty at best today so we've been a little slow getting all our images. Here is a gallery of todays best photos from Colin Meagher.

Mitch Ropalato and Curtis Keene chewing the fat pre quali day practice.

Andy Ward working over Cam Cole's Lapierre DH Machine.

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Newness: Sam Blenkinsop's new lid gets a custom fit.

Stevie Bell, Gee's wrench, works on wheels at Ft Bill.

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Did I mention that this place is a wheel wrecker? This is not one of the Atherton's wheels either, but it doesn't matter whose wheel it is really; this place just eats 'em for breakfast.

Ben Reid on course out of the new start hut.

Top drag racer of the day--if you can call Ft Bill a drag race. Gwin was looking "on" from the very beginning of the day.

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Athertons. It was good to see Dan out on the track again.

Cross winds on this board walk will damn near take you off the path and into the heather.

Chris Ball, a former legit World Cup DH Racer in his own right now works as a technical delegate for the UCI, making sure that things run smoothly.

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Practice run with Blenki on his six: MS-Evil's Brook McDonald.

Dropping in again... It's meticulous attention to detail that sets racers like Beaumont apart from that guy you know who rides really, really fast. In South Africa, he raced a national XC race in baggy shorts on a 6" bike and got 16th. In an XC... WTF?

Scottish cycling fans will do anything to keep the midges away.

Down time. Photographer Keno Derleyn of France kills time course side looking over his "to do" list of riders to shoot.

Getting warmed up...

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Rachel Atherton: "I visualize every track from top to bottom. It really does help me focus. A couple times I haven't been able to get the whole course done in my head, and I've always crashed at that part of the track or had a major mistake of some kind."

Racing to qualify at the 2011 UCI MTB World Cup DH in Fort William, Scotland

Minnaar on track.

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Nick Beer with a big off the bike. A bruised hand may have him out for the Final tomorrow.

Oscar Harnstrom--somedays it's just not your lucky day. His tire bead pulled out. No flat, but no qualifying, either.

Massive bomb holes began developing, wreaking even more havoc on rider's wheels.

Lapierre recently acquired Loic Bruni, son of a French DH legend. First World Cup and he qualified... not too shabby.

Posted In:
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Author Info:

IanHylands
Member since Jun 23, 2008
588 articles

14 Comments

10 0

takamine206 (Jun 4, 2011 at 22:44)

that start hut is cool as! oh and also the riding is

dh-freeeride (Jun 5, 2011 at 4:10)

Nick beer's bike looks like it said "screw you im finishing this!" aha!

tdoyle1995 (Jun 4, 2011 at 22:56)

uggggg why no footage of the world cups!! so annoyying

22 0

IanHylands (Jun 4, 2011 at 22:59)

uh yeah, thanks UCI for making it impossible for anyone to shoot video...

pinned798 (Jun 5, 2011 at 0:02)

you just have to look around the web. check out dirt.co.uk, vitalmtb.com, tri-ride.com, and freecaster.tv for videos. there are plenty of other sites with vids! not sure why pinkbike can't get them.

benjiscott82 (Jun 5, 2011 at 2:33)

isnt it on freecaster? and if so what time??

Sean1708 (Jun 5, 2011 at 3:15)

yeah it is, 1.15 i think.

benjiscott82 (Jun 5, 2011 at 3:54)

cheers mate

MedellinColombiaDH (Jun 4, 2011 at 23:01)

I guess theres gonna be a video of the finals, be patient guys! Great article by the way

dirtywhoor (Jun 5, 2011 at 20:09)

is cam coles easton stem a new proto type

BLIPDH (Jun 4, 2011 at 22:49)

Sweweeeetttt

Wipeout1996 (Jun 4, 2011 at 22:50)

siick

thecarpy (Jun 4, 2011 at 23:00)

check out minaar's fork. proto boxxer?

boylagz (Jun 4, 2011 at 23:02)

No. Just stanchions with DLC.