The Grey Mile - Talking the Walk at Fort William
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Ten years ago the people saw a new French king crowned in the highlands. It was a time when the Brooklyn Machine Works was the coolest bike on earth, a time when wide bars were, shall we say, very poorly understood and even a time when you could be forgiven for wearing hard-shell body armor externally. How things have changed. But yet we see so many of the World’s finest from yester-year continue to make that same annual migration today, Cedric included. This afternoon the greats took the solemn march down that infamous path of destruction, just one more time. What kind of state was it in? What did the riders make of it? Relax. We’re about to tell you all about it.
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 Needles looking down the belly of the beast. And make no mistake, this track is an animal that will eat you alive if you're not on it. If it's not the boulder-strewn lines up high, it's the woods down below. If it's not the woods down below, it's the motorway on the bottom of the track, riders are so gassed by that point that time consuming errors are far too easy to make. |
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| Loose shale is liable to meet raw steel and wood at any point... in what could be described as an awkward juxtaposition, if you will. |
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| Gee strides out across Middle Earth, Gandalf staff at the ready. Suffice to say, few, if indeed any, 'shall pass'. |
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| Sick Mick is far from ill health right now - looking to the order of 20lbs leaner and still keener than any boy scout. |
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| Watch out, Rachel's about. And looking fast. Could she be... the 'One'? |
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| Just one of the monster square edge hits littering this track. It's obstacles like this that see the mechanics start lacing spare wheels up days before the first practice. |
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| Mark Beaumont leads out, most reminiscent of qualifying a year ago. |
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| Atkinson takes a moment to consider Scotland's least hospitable trail. Jill in tow. |
 | This could be the roughest the track has been. We've got a load of rocks sitting over the top of the track right now, pretty big ones. I've been coming here a long time, as much as anyone, and it's definitely seen better days. The rougher it gets, the more it becomes a kind of point and shoot situation. You can waste a lot of energy trying to get crazy taking fancy lines and things. - Bryn Atkinson |
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| 'No worries guys, the holes are only that deep.' That's what we hope he's saying, otherwise it looks like he might want to take up photography. And he might be damned good at that as well. |
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| Claudio Calouri test flies his mountain rescue 'copter at a scene of possible carnage. |
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| A short break from the roughness as the woods meander away from the road gap. |
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| Old tear-offs litter the lower sections of the track, but unless the forecast changes dramatically, sunny and warm is the call, we're not expected to see anyone using tear-offs at this race. |
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| The most significant alteration to the track comes in the lower woods before the motorway. Who will feel the punishing kick of the Dudes of Hazard 'Hoofer'? Sam Hill thinks he'll be okay... |
Sam - "It’s a cool change they’ve put in the woods. That was probably my least favourite part of the track before just because it was flat and rocky and hard to hold speed. Now they’ve made a jump there you should be able to keep a bit more momentum down to the bottom."
PB - "No chance of you going in the water?"
Sam - "Hopefully not, I can swim anyway."
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| The motorway keeps its generous sprinkling of super-lengthy table-tops to keep the big stylers smiling. |
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| It's a head to head finish for Sam and Brook in front of the roaringly empty stand. |
The changes to the track may be small, but hey we've got teams changing, bikes changing (watch this space) and you can bet any rider that didn't manage to take a trophy home last season will be changing pace too. It's looking dry, fast and fierce at this point 'Billside.
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*you saw it here first*
True that
... Legend... And then it was silence.
www.ibikeride.com/scotland/1580-nevis-range-fort-william-mountain-bike-centre
Would love to ride it now as 9 years ago it was too much for my ATX 990
Fort William is the town near the track though, the actual track is at the nevis range