Hurty Knees & Canadian Steeze - Mont St Anne Qualifying
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 Danny Hart and a really big tree. |
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| You can't tell how badass this gap is, but Ratboy here was one of the only guys clearing the hole after this rock. And this rock is slicker than Miami Bryce working a crowd of Quebecois local girls at tonight's after party. |
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| The definition of super tacky: Mt St Anne a day after the rain's gone away. Maxxis affiliations aside... |
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| Full gas on his final practice run: Gee Atherton in the upper woods. Unfortunately, Gee's front end washed out on a hard right leading down to the motorway below the gondola and he took an off the bike... pretty much an automatic 8 second penalty with the off the bike, and then he took the rest of the run easy; + 9.967 seconds to Steve Smith. |
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| Sam Hill with the Ringwraiths hot on his tail, descending through the upper woods near Rivendale. That's a Lord of the Rings reference for the uninitiated, and it's supposed to highlight the fog and trees that account for the majority of this photo. Typically the blue and white guy on the left-hand side of the photo would be the subject of a race photo, but because the trees were so pretty I wanted to capture that, instead. |
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| After his recent winning ways, Remi Therion's 31st in qualifying might seem like a bit of an anticlimax to many, but he hit a tree fairly hard in the morning and took the qualifications easy. |
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| Blenkinsop scored third place with this absolutely destroyed chain guide and a bent pedal spindle. Nothing short of an amazing ride, given that the damage occurred high up on the track. |
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| Blenky has been steadily fighting his way back towards the big time after a little while in the background. His best MSA performance to date is 6th in 2008, but today shows the thirst for juicier still. |
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| Loic Bruni warping into 8th, expressing his interest in the podium once again, only 5 seconds back. |
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| Sam Hill into 5th place and is all smiles as his dad and brother's family are both here in Quebec to cheer him on. Big thanks to Merv for the lunch delivery today. Clutch move, I owe you! |
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| After poring over photos and compiling a veritable database of recent Aaron Gwin photos, in-house photo analysts have confirmed that Gwin is producing 14.2% more roost from his back tire since the new, longer chainstays. That's science, people. 4th place today. |
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| Atherton talks slippery rocks. It's been a while since Gee began the weekend with only 7 new points to call his own. |
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| Brook is sitting right next to us in the lobby as we're uploading the photos, and we asked him to write his own caption for this photo. Here's what he had to say about his qualifying run today: "Captions? Sorry man, I'm busy right now, I can't. Wait, you're that guy that was hanging out across from our pit, shooting me and Neko with the long lens as we changed shirts... Sir, I need you to remove this man from the..." Thanks for the guest caption, Brook! |
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| Emilie Siegenthalller rolling the reduced fog in the group B practice this morning; yesterday-by comparison-was as thick as oatmeal that's been cooking for a week on the stove. |
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| Morgane Charre Morgane Charrging. |
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| The girl in the leader's jersey hit the rock drop for qualifying and only five others would follow suit. Rachel first raced MSA in 2004, but has actually only won once, that being last year. Still she was fastest down today, setting the scene nicely for a repeat performance parfait. |
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| Spotted a bunch of guys all going for this low-rider bike set up this morning during junior practice. You can't even turn the cranks properly this way cool kids! All were riding across the same section of track that happened be around the knuckle of final gap. |
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| A healthy Innes Graham of MS-Mondraker was looking rowdy on the way to top seed in the juniors. |
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| Couscous still in the hanger, about to turn on the jets. |
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| Thibaut Ruffin looks for a way back into the top 15 he scored last year on this legendary course. The mists rolled through the woods all day, bringing that distinctive St Anne vibe along with them. The lower rocks gardens come after the flat-out open section under the lift and give the riders the most to think about. |
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| Brendog giving a little clinic on style 101: bar turns are an automatic upgrade over a basic straight air, and they're way more likely to get you into any photo post. |
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| Remi Thirion scoping out the last woods section, trying to unlock the seconds and lock down another stellar result... He's got some time to make up for Sunday. |
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| Guillaume Cauvin managed to hit 64kmp at the speed trap--but things went awry from there. |
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| Aurellien Giodanengo having a bad hair day in the rock garden. |
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| Danny Hart romping into a second place in qualifier. Will Danny boy hold it together to continue his year on year MSA rank climb? |
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| Elbows in for the win. We can assume Stevie went for the fork grab down this first straight to set his 4.05. |
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| Patchy, rolling cloud eventually settled into an inversion layer by the end of qualifying. |
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| Knee pads only take the edge off a crash at +50 kph; the zone where Gee went down is very high speed and loaded with brick sized rocks. Gee was lucky to walk away from that with 18th place and a few bumps, bruises, and a gashed knee. He should be good to go for the final on Sunday. |
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| What you can't see under that helmet is the sweet Quebec-appropriate old-timey-movie-bad-guy mustache. It's real nice, and hopefully we'll see it in all it's glory on top of the podium this weekend. Pinkbike's supposed to be unbiased and objective, but hey, we're a Canadian site so we can just come out and root for Sender Steve. |
 | I felt good today... The run was awesome, every corner I passed was like 'oh wow this dirt is amazing' you could push so hard and by the time I got to the bottom I was just stoked. It was a clean run with no mistakes so just try to go from there quicker and quicker, treating that qualifier like I came in 20th when Sunday comes- Stevie Smith, Devinci Global Racing |
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| And tonight in typical Mont Ste Anne fashion... then came the rain. See you on a very muddy track in the morning! |
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