Fort William World Cup | Day Three

It’s Sunday afternoon in Fort William and that means there’s some racing. Read on for all that happened during day three of the Fort William World Cup.

A morning of practice didn’t see much action, even the keenest riders only completing two runs in attempt to protect both rider and bike. No shortage of practice on Friday and plenty more on offer during Saturday before qualifying in the afternoon means that riders have no excuse not to have got to grips with the 2007 World Championship course.

Day 3 inside

The women kicked things off today with the top twenty from yesterdays qualifying. Emmeline Ragot took fifth spot having completed the 2.82km course in 5:20. Fourth was the UK’s Tracy Moseley who was happy with her run but slotted into place with a time of 5:16, just two hundredths back from third placed Floriane Pugin. She may have won qualifying yesterday but Rachel Atherton wasn’t able to make it stick today and had to settle for second with a 5:12. Looking flat out on the open top section was Sabrina Jonnier and she followed this display of skill and power up with a winning margin of over a second, the 5:11 being a solid win. This means that in the overall results Floriane now sits in third whilst Commencal’s Rachel Atherton is second. Sabrina’s win today cements her at the top of the points table. Welsh Junior rider Manon Carpenter showed consistency this weekend with eighth place in both qualifying and the race, nineteen seconds back from the leaders each day too. That is a seriously impressive achievement given that this is only her second World Cup and that the gap to Tracy Moseley who is one of the most experienced racers out there was less than fifteen seconds.


One of the many features of World Cups is twin split times which go hand in hand with the speed trap. Tracy Moseley took the fastest first sector whilst Rachel managed to take the second. Winning the highest speed through the trap was fourteenth placed Brit Jess Stone with a stunning 60km/h, 2km/h than race winner Jonnier and basically 5km/h faster than the average. Suffice to say she was pretty pleased with that, even more so when only ten men managed to go faster!


In the Mens there are the obvious candidates but deserving mention was Scottish Junior rider Lewis Buchanan who had an off track excursion near the tree line and had to jump off the edge of the track to avoid a far worse crash, just about taking out a photographer in the process. All caught on the video too so no doubt will be up online sometime soon. There were of course numerous mechanicals, punctures and crashes; Solid Factory rider Pierre Georges crashed out hard when his front tyre punctured near the tree line on one of the new sections and washed wide, dumping him heavily into the ditch and giving him a muddy bath. Local rider Chris Hutchens looked on fire through the tree line marker for Transcend Magazine, his seventy seventh place in qualifying having not been a true showcase of his abilities as he admitted to having had a steady run and riding the brakes too much. He finished fifty third overall today with a time of 4:52. Thirty third place qualifier Joe Barnes ended on the same second for MTBCut but just broke into the top fifty with forty ninth place.


Another Brit to celebrate was Fergus Lamb who placed twenty eighth, just six tenths back from Josh Bryceland. There was disappointment too in the MTBCut/Orange camp when Ben Cathro suffered problems. Despite not having had the best top sector he pulled it back to seventh at the bottom split which is impressive enough for the local rider but when you realise that he didn’t have a chain for some of that it makes it all the more so. We let Ben explain: “I did a super secret sexy line which was a nice jump over a rock garden to sweet down slope but the sweet down slope had a massive boulder on it and my bike wasn’t too pleased about the situation so there were a few bent bits I had to swap out before racing. That was a bit of a rush to get the chain device and chain ring fixed before racing. Then in the race run the chain jammed in the woods which meant I had to fight to get it moving again and then it fell off properly on the motorway. Still, I’m reasonably pleased with a top twenty although it would have been nice to finish close to the podium.’ Cathro now goes into round three at Leogang twentieth in the overall standings, earning him the coveted protected status for qualifying.



The big story of the weekend was of course Hill injuring himself during timed training on Friday and of course him not completing his seeding run yesterday but starting it so he at least had the option of racing the final should he feel fit. In the end he elected not to race the final which left his team mates Brendan and junior Troy Brosnan to fly the Monster/Specialized flag. Troy looked smooth and must be happy with fifty seventh on his first trip to the hill and in only his second World Cup. This also leaves him in the enviable position of leading the Junior overall standings going away from the event. Brendan finished the day in twenty second with a 4:45. Danny Hart didn’t let his puncture in qualifying get to him and stormed the final, earning himself twelfth place, just one spot ahead of Kona’s Joe Smith, another rider to have really upped his game for the 2010 season. Eighth in the mud of Maribor and thirteenth here in the dust of Scotland, he goes to the next round in fourteenth position overall.


And then it was onto the usual suspects, those who are always in the hunt for a victory. Mick Hannah stormed into the hot seat with a 4:37 despite having been down at the first split. He ended up the day in fifth place. It looked for a bit as though his GT team mate Marc Beaumont would be able to challenge him but lost two seconds between the final split and the finish, dropping down the order to eleventh although still a result to be happy with. Their Carbon GT Fury’s definitely won the prize for brightest bikes this weekend with their searing neon yellow paint jobs. The American National Champion Aaron Gwin is currently leading a resurgence in his nations racing prowess, their dominance having waned over the last ten years. He pulled into the finish with a time of 4:37 and finished 4th despite having been fastest to the second and final split, losing time on the sprint to the line. Third place went to Greg Minnaar who looked like he was on for the win, it being expected that he would pull back time on the final sprint. He did enough to leap Gwin but not enough for top spot and the 4:36 must have hurt for last year’s winner.


Proving that his form in qualifying was no fluke, Cameron Cole stormed into the arena with a 4:36, eight tenths up on Minnaar for an eventual second place. The Athertons, may not have had the best of weekends here, Dan failing to qualify for downhill, going out early too in the 4x and Rachel losing to Sabrina in the downhill but when it came to the downhill there was one hope left and his name was Gee. Never one to be written off, the 2008 World Champion hit the final split in second place and powered his way to the finish as the crowds erupted, as they do for any Brit capable of chasing the win. And win he did once Minnaar failed to make the best of his run and in doing so became the only rider to make it into the 4:35’s over the weekend. When asked how he’d managed to pull the time back in the final sector: ‘It was all in the crowd, they really spurred me on down the last straight’. Steve Peat may be the reigning World Champion and one of the most respected men in the sport but had a bad day at the office for the second race in a row and finished up in a disappointing eighteenth place. There’ll be hope that the big man from Sheffield will able to pull his World Championship winning form back for Leogang in just a few weeks, his lack of training over the winter hurting this year’s performance badly.

 

So an incredible weekend, which saw a great atmosphere from the crowds and success for Graves & Horakova in the 4x whilst Gee & Sabrina took the top spots in the downhill. And on top of that was some fantastic weather which complemented all the changes to the course, ensuring that there was the usual excitement and suspense that always surrounds events on this Scottish mountainside. The next round is in the Austrian location of Leogang which replaces the unfortunately cancelled Schladming on 20th June.


For full results click here for mens and here for the womens.

We have a huge number of pictures from this event so we’ll be continuing to load more up in the coming weeks. Keep your eyes peeled. Click here for the full album.

Posted In:
Stories Reader Stories