Hey guys, bit of an update from the last few weeks!
We arrived in the UK to some good weather and picked up the van. After a few small mods to the van and after ticking everything off the shopping list for the trick we were ready to get up to Scotland for the 3rd world cup round.
We arrived on the Sunday morning and I headed up with the other van life Aussies, Remy Morton and Max Warshawsky. Got some good time on the bike up at Fort William on the world cup track before the race the following Sunday. Nothing prepares you for how rough and long the track is. After just 6 runs my body was done for the day as well as going through the first back wheel for the trip!
The start of the week was spent trail riding on the same hill in the woods to keep my legs moving. They have got some rad secret trails up there with so many techy steep descents to get through and I was feeling good for first practise on Friday.
I had a good day building pace slowly and trying to find the smoothest lines to try conserve the body for the bottom pedal section. I had a new wheel laced up and it got me through the day for now.
Saturday: I felt good in the morning practise before qualifying later in the afternoon. We couldn’t have got any luckier with the weather all weekend with sunny blue skies a stark contrast to previous years! I had a good warm up and was feeling good in the gate. Immediately out of the gate i started riding too tight and didn’t flow the top corners at all and lost a lot of time. I slowly clawed back time over the rest of the track and managed to just squeeze it into the finals with a 79th place!
Sunday: Race day. After exploding yet another rim in morning practise, I borrowed a spare rear wheel off the legend Ed Masters. I was feeling really good for finals. My run was good right out of the gate and past the first split, 1 minute in, i was already 3 seconds faster than my qualifying time! Just after the first split I blew 2 spokes out of the front wheel and all I could hear was them banging around. I had to tone it down a bit down the roughest part of the track to save the front wheel but managed to bring back some positions on the final pedal. Nothing prepares you for the crowd coming into the finish arena at Ft Bill, with a record number of 26,000 fans it was great to come down and into the hot seat for 15 or so riders! I ended up in 48th overall in the finals and moved into 66th in the overall for the series!
I’ll keep you posted with a report from Round 4 from Leogang, Austria.
Cheers,
Jordy.
