Sunday, September 4, 2011

2011 World Championships


The 2011 World Championships were held in Champery, Switzerland. After competing in the final World Cup Round in Italy just under 2 weeks ago I was very excited to be in the biggest and last race of the season. All the training and build this year comes down to this Pinnacle event and the need for a solid performance is a necessity.

The World Champs XCO track was a fantastic race course! It had lots of rooty sections to negotiate with. As the venue is situated amongst a valley in trees it never really dried out as during the week we had a couple of rain showers. The track also had a neat drop off in it which a few riders had some good crashes in during practise. It was the ideal track for my 29er wheels and newly crowned 2011 Elite male World Champion, Jaroslav Kuharvy proved that today on his full suspension 29er machine!

Two days out from the race I was starting to feel the nerves. I knew that the first lap was going to be frantic! So race day Friday came around and as we were racing at 5pm it was a nervous wait all day. The last few hours before the race flew by and before I knew it I was on the line ready to go!

I had a pretty good start but it could have been a wee bit better as the legs weren’t feeling fantastic. This wasn’t too much of an issue though as it was all bunched up and there wasn’t much room to play with at that stage! However once around roughly 1-2 minutes of track I saw a clean side line and smacked it hard gaining several positions and moving up toward the front half of the pack!

From here the start loop went through the feed zone area and up the major climb of the race. As we passed through the feed zone we entered the tarmac (that eventually follows up the hill) and would have been doing roughly over 30km/h. I was near the left hand side and was eyeing up my attack to push further up the field. As I was nailing it a Dutch rider came up the inside of me standing up sprinting and collided with my handle bars. I came off and in spectacular fashion and went over my handle bars and slammed onto the barrier and road. I was not impressed!

I got back on my bike with a few bumps and a bit of a bloody elbow but pushed on up the hill to meet the bottle neck at the top. Once I finally got some clear room on the first proper lap I moved up and gained some positions but another problem had struck me. Due to the crash my front derailleur had basically chiselled off where the cable comes around so I was stuck in my Small chain ring! I tried to keep as positive as I could trying to focus on smashing it out but after the crash and now a mechanical problem (not to mention the huge amount of lost time) I just wasn’t able to ride as well as what I should have and eventually got lapped out due to all my lost time.

I was extremely gutted. The season for me has certainly been a tough one and to get a solid result here would have been a huge high for me to end my 2011 season. Racing can be a very cruel sport at times I sure got my fair share yesterday! If I look at the positives I will take my experience that I have gained in my campaign and use it next year to improve and get knuckling down to get where I need to and should be. I would like to say a huge thanks to all my support back home, having people who believe in me although I haven’t had the greatest of luck so far it really does help and I hope next season that things start to come together as they should!

Anyway it’s time for me to have a well earnt break after the hard build up I have had. I’ll back in New Zealand on Thursday and looking forward to being at home with friends and my awesome family!