WC No.1 DH/4X VIGO - SPAIN May 21, 2007
Posted by paulwalton in : Kona Factory Team , add a commentVigo, Spain The venue for the 1st world cup was the same as the previous 2 years, a small hill just behind the city on the west coast of Spain. I was due to depart on Monday to arrive by Tuesday Evening, then setup everything on Wednesday ready for Thursday morning Training. As I have now come to expect, it is very rare that things go to plan!I ended up leaving on Wednesday afternoon after finding the team truck had some electrical problems and with a public holiday in France, my delay was extended. Wednesday morning was spent collecting a back-up vehicle, unpacking the team truck and re-packing the other van. Obviously this was done in a rush so most of my 18hr drive was spent thinking about what I had forgotten and then what I was going to do to get around not having it….. The drive went surprisingly well and I made it here mid afternoon on Thursday. Too late for walking the track, but in time to setup with the help of Tracy and Fabien who had arrived the evening before. 4X training was on Thursday evening and I had plenty to keep me bust well into the night. Training went ok for Kamil and he decided to use his Cowan HT for the event, even though the track was rough and loose, the start was critical.DH training on Friday was going well with only some small setup changes needed on the bikes, until Fabien had a big crash and injured his leg. This put him out for the rest of the day. Thankfully it was not too serious and with some excellent work from Martin (therapist) he was able to ride again on Saturday. Due to a slightly different format the DH semi-final was to be on Saturday, this was to allow for an early finish on Sunday for the Spanish GP.
Tracy and Fab were both happy with their lines and ready for the semi final
Tracy was off first as she holds the No.1 plate from 2006 overall win. She took the start with serious aggression, and actually ended up over cooking it on the first section, fortunately she managed to get it back under control and ride the rest of the run to a safe 3rd place. Emiline Ragot and Sabrina Joinier took 2nd and 1st. The loose fast track suited Fabien but he was properly focussed during his run and ended up making a small mistake which sent him off track and put him well down the finishing list. When I spoke to him afterwards he was reallyu disappointed with his result but was happy that his split time was good and showed he had good speed.Kamil had an OK run but he was not really satisfied with his performance and knew it would be tough to qualify with such a large field of riders. Fortunately he managed to squeeze in by the narrowest of Margins and take 80th place! The DH final was on Sunday and it had rained lots over night, during the training it continued to rain in showers and then the sun would pop out and dry the track really quickly, so the weather was going to be a large factor in the results.The riders decided to go with intermediate tyres to play it safe. For Tracy this paid off as she went down in the dry with only some parts of the track still wet.She had good run and rode the technical sections well, however was well down on the pedalling and eventually loosing nearly 5sec to Sabrina all in the bottom of the track. Tracy knows she is not yet at 100% physically and now has a few weeks to really push her training. She finished second so was happy to get some good point at the first race.Kamil was the first rider down in the mens race, he had a good run but rode at 95% due to not knowing how dry the track was going to be and eventually did a safe clean run and ended up 32nd place. Fabien started 61st due to his placing from the previous day, unfortunately for him, the weather moved in after the first half of the field went down, it rained, hailed, and left us running for shelter. The track turned into a swamp and we did not have mud tyres so Fabien was left with an ice rink as a race track, some other riders like Nathan Rennie who started at the same period also suffered the conditions and ended up with a poor result. Fabien was happy with his ride and he made the best out of the bad conditions to finish 24th. As Fabien said “ the race was a lottery and I was not the winner”. The riders were overall disappointed with there results, but still happy to have finished where the did given the circumstances. Results DH WOMEN1st Sabrina Jonnier = 2:52.722nd Tracy Moseley = 2:59.99
3rd Emiline Ragot = 3:02.28
MEN 1st Marc Beaumont = 2:37.212nd David Vazquez = 2:38.57
3rd Greg Minnaar = 2:39.09
24th Fabien Barel = 2:45.95
32nd Kamil Tatarkovic = 2:48.00 4X Kamil finished the qualifying in 6th place event though he made a few mistakes which last him valuable time. It was tough track which was closer to DH than BMX and was a refreshing change, also the new random gate allowed for some interesting results. Kamil rode really well all through the heats, winning every race up to the quarter final, he hesitated on the gate and lost a pedal stroke which caused him to be squeezed out on the first turn and had to brake hard, this put him down to fourth in the heat with no way of getting back. Results 4X1st Gee Atherton2nd Brian Lopes
3rd Michael Prokop
4th Joost Wickman
9th Kamil Tatarkovic