One of the best pics ive ever seen!! props to Ian

 the gold stansions look mint

 soo crisp, pin to win!

 POD

 wicked pick, that is a badass lookin neckbrace he's wearin

 i put a tenner that this will be pod..

 how is everything so clean? :S

 That's only a few yards into his race run...and it was a pretty dry weekend too for once!

 is it me or does the front tyre look like a maxxis minion DHR? not a DHF?

 they dont ride for maxxis

 i know, gee atherton races for conti, but ran highrollers at fortbill

 i never knew that there was a fort named after me!? :O

 fortbill is short for fort william, i don't know why, just is

 because bill is short for william

 lookin good

 aaron runs his bars really far forward and used to run the brake mounts right up the grips so he braked using the middle of the lever (but he seems to got over that)

fast riders have the wackiest setups

 i wonder what the benefit of that coating is...

 smoother!

 lol aye its a fucking nice picture but i'd rather it were not so close up and we could see the track cuz hes pinning it so nicely

 From Ian:

"The camera is a Canon 1D MKIIn camera with a bunch of EF lenses. All the pictures in this album were shot with just three lenses : 200mm f2.8L MKII, 135mm f2L, 16-35 f2.8L but I also use a 35mm f1.4L, a 50mm f1.4, and a 100mm f2 as required. High speed flash is provided, where appropriate, by up to five Canon 580EZ flashguns. Exposure metering is frequently set manually based on a Minolta incident light meter eading, and wide angle shots are usually manually preset for focus. For ultimate action stopping precision I also sometimes use the amazing high speed Shutterbeam infra red trigger from Woods Electronics with a bunch of Pocket Wizard Multimax transceivers to control everything. Simples!"

 Jesus christ!
I want your setup!

 Sounds like some everyday terminology

 what ever all that means lol it produces an amazing photo!!

 not to geek out TOOOOO much... but do you mean the 200mm f/2.0 or the 70-200mm f/2.8? i'll guess and say the 200mm f/2.0 considering all of your lenses excluding the wide angle are prime! and most of the range between 70-200 is decently covered. hahaha (i just geeked out). well, darn! you definitely seem to have all the ranges covered. do you do much post processage? it looks to clean to be edited very much. but that's the problem... it looks so clean... almost makes me angry... there must be an answer other than you're using all L-series lenses. haha

 and to GoApollo, you want Jesus Christs' setup?

 It's the 200mm f2.8 MKII prime lens, not the 70-200 f2.8 zoom. The 70-200 is a fine lens but it's very heavy to to hold up for thousands of shots! I use the 200 f2.8 lens because it's razor sharp wide open, lightweight, and focuses and tracks impeccably(the focusing performance is never specified by manufacturers but there are real differences between lenses that only become apparent with extended use). The basic image quality is set by the camera and even though the 1DMKIIn is now two models old, the quality, even at ISO 400, is superb. However to get the maximum quality transferred to a developed image requires a degree of processing. The volume of pictures I take at races can be pretty big(more than 8000 at this World Cup event) so the time for selecting and processing the images is limited, and the workflow needs to be be pretty slick. So I have many actions predefined in Photoshop to automate as much as possible. It starts with a small amount of capture sharpening (but no noise reduction since it's not needed), then local contrast enhancement, colour correction, dynamic range adjustment, cropping, then resizing, colour profiling, and sharpening for the web. That all adds up to maybe 12 or 15 layers that are essentially predefined and ready for me to apply some rapid editing on the spot. So the fact that the pictures look "clean" is essentially down to the quality of the camera sensor, backed up by the best quality post processing I can do in the time available.

 oooh, haha. ok. i forgot there was a 2.8 version. i was thinking of the $5000 f2.0, which didn't seem HIGHLY impossible considering the all your other awesome gear! snap... a 200mm f2.8 for $800 seems logical! haha. i just flipped through a review of the lense. do you ever feel the need for IS (or weather sealing...)? the 70-200 would be the other option... sacrificing a little sharpness (and wallet) for the IS as well and a nice range of zoom... i guess IS isn't needed much in sports except for the occasional pan! duct tape is always a nice weather sealant!

 The 200mm f2.0 L is one of the finest lenses ever made with unbelievable performance at full aperture. I'd love to have one but the reality is it wouldn't get much use as it weighs 2.5kg versus the 765g of the f2.8 version, so would have to be used on a tripod with a gimbal mount which is a bit limiting. The f2.8 prime is a much better fit for downhilling.
IS is a great feature in some circumstances but is irrelevant if shooting at 1/2000s - 1/8000s which is where most of my shots sit.
Weather sealing is good but a proper rain cover offers much better protection for expensive camera kit, especially in Scotland! I use the Kata rain cover which fits even my 500mm f4L lens. Having said that the 1D system is remarkably robust. Check out our Scarborough night ride album where torrential rain was being driven by high wind for hours, and eventually caused the event to be cancelled. My 1dMKIIn camera, 580EZ flash, and 35mm f1.4L lens were dripping with water for hours as I had forgotten the rain cover, but still performed faultlessly all night. So the system is very tolerant, but I would still strongly recommend a rain cover as lens elements can separate if exposed to damp conditions for protracted periods.
BTW, as you are looking at zooms, I keep a 70-200 f4L IS in the bag for general shots. It doesn't get much use but its performance at full aperture is nothing short of astonishing - it's even sharper than my 200mm f2.8L prime! It's a fact that the top end camera equipment nowadays is much better than most photographers, and that includes me!

 thanks for the tips!

 about to order a 70-200 f2.8 is II... stoked!

 it's MTB Full Face Dot-Approved model... beauty