Fort William World Cup (Part 2)

Friday and first practice kicked off with me taking up the role of roving track maintenance trying to remove more puncture rocks and fill in some holes dug out by the tyres. As ever riders start out slow getting a feel for the track but by the end of the day they were getting up to speed. That afternoon was the 4X qualifying, Martin Bullock had the track looking good and the riders were enjoying themselves and turning it on for the crowd during practice and the Qualifying. I always try and stay out of marshalling this so I can watch it properly.

      

Saturday and qualifying, again I’m set to wander up and down the hill fixing anything dangerous, however we can’t do anything that would alter the track after practice has started. This gave me lots of chance to take some pictures during practice then I sat with one of the girls at the bottom of the Off Beat Wall and watched qualifying which saw Rachel Atherton go fastest by nearly 10 seconds and in the men it was an all Brit top 3 with Marc Beaumont 1^st Gee Atherton 2^nd and Danny Hart 3^rd. Gwinny crashed twice on his run so no one knew what he had in him. Saturday is a late one with the 4X finals going on till late evening. I was roped into marshalling but at a great spot just above the rock garden, it was good fun to be stood on that corner with a great atmosphere and a couple of big crashes just in front of me. The Brits were unlucky with Katy Curd losing a shoe in the Semis and Scott Beaumont crashing early on in his Semi. However they still placed 5th and 6^th and lesser known Suzanne Lacey came 4^th with Melissa Buhl and Michael Prokop taking the wins. Women’s Results. Men’s Results. Oh and there was some torch thing taken up the gondola earlier in the day.

Sunday comes around quick, and we woke to a dreich day, after a week of decent and occasionally beautiful weather, this meant all the practice was out the window for the riders with the track being wet and slippy in the woods but actually more grippy on the top sections . I was called at the start of Practice to put down some chicken wire to give the back wheel some grip out of the start hut. Rachel Atherton and Tracey Mosely came up to do a run and Rachel commented that she couldn’t even see the first berm.

Rachel and Tracey.

I was called for a couple of small jobs, but my main work that day was taking tea and coffee to the marshalls freezing up on the hillside. This allowed me to walk the entire track during the womens race and watch the girls rip it down the hillside whereas most marshalls are stuck in one spot the entire day, however like them when I reached the bottom of the course in time for the mens race I had no idea what the womens results were.

I took up in the teams usual spot at the top of the Off Beat Wall ready to be called out but assuming I was good to sit and watch and do a little crowd control here and there. Watching the riders come flying over the final big jump (the Bods’ jump) and blast down the wall is awesome, seeing just how wild they get, watching them whip it and also noticing how completely knackered they must be by this point. You can hear the roars of the crowd but that’s the only way to tell how well someone did as you can only catch a bit of the commentary.

Gwinny coming down early spent a long time on the hot-seat and stayed there as no one could quite beat his time, Gee made a mistake high up and came in 3^rd, Marc had a big off on the top section so just styled it down the rest, Peaty had torn a hamstring in qualifying so just rolled it and got a bit lost in the cloud up top, Josh Bryceland did well to grab 5^th place. Danny Hart came closest just 0.8^th of a second of Gwin’s time, I saw him in the pits later and didn’t know whether to congratulate him or commiserate that he didn’t manage to quite take his first win. Other Brits put in some storming performances and 6 out of the top 10 had the Union Jack next to their names. Results here.

In practice when you could see more than 6 foot.

The Women’s race had ended up with Emmeline Ragot taking the win over a gutted Rachel Atherton, who has never managed the win on home soil. Myriam Nicole took third Florianne Pugin took 4^th and Tracey Mosely came 5^th in the first Downhill race she’s competed in this year.

A fantastic event that’s so much fun to be at and even more fun to be a part of not to mention being able to help put together one of the best races on the calendar and chat to riders, mechanics, press, fans and other volunteers all in one awesome place for one awesome reason.

Deer Fence stop: Riders chatting to fans and each other.

Fort William World Cup (part 1)

As ever too much fun was to be had and too much work to be done to sit down and write. So here it is a two weeks later.

After worrying about transporting my bike 500 miles from Bristol to For William and back the train was no problem and on the way from Manchester to Glasgow the driver didn’t bat an eyelid, going from Glasgow to Fort William and the guy loading took one look at the bag and said ‘Fort William luggage goes there’ pointing to one of the compartments. The way back was a little more difficult as I ended up on double-decker buses which annoyingly have less luggage space so going from Glasgow to London I had to get out to move the bag out of the way at every stop.  So despite the random rules on the Megabus website if you turn up with a bike you should be ok just be nice and put it in yourself as it’s likely to be over their safe lifting weight.

Arriving at Fort William I threw my bike back together and headed up to Bank Street Lodge, settled in and waited for the others to arrive, as I’d missed the shops being open it was a whisky fuelled reunion courtesy of Jims’ constant supply of good quality stuff. Unfortunately this meant when I rode  the 6 or so miles to the Nevis range the next day I wasn’t entirely sober which resulted in me miss-judging a bridge just before the car park and smacking into it, I stayed on my bike and only suffered a slight graze on my arm.

Work up at the Nevis Range took it’s now familiar routine heading up the Gondola and putting the poles out to mark the track deciding which lines should be left open and which should be closed off and taking note of sections of track as well as spectator routes that needed a bit of work. This also gives us a chance to look at the new sections that have been put in like the new Motorway section.

 The second day was taping the track out moving a few poles where the tape would let people take a sneaky line we didn’t want them taking. Last year we taped the wooded section into the road gap (The Big Doon) quite tightly to force them on a certain line, this year we took the same route but taped it wider leaving a tight but fast inside line, this section was the most debated and deliberated section as it has to be fun for riders and spectators but challenging as well as slowing the riders down before the Big Doon. At the same time down at the car park, the village and pits with all the official tents and cabins were being set up, though none of the teams or shops start to turn up until Wednesday.

Wednesday there was lots of talk on Twitter of teams heading up to the Fort, although few actually turned up on site that day, up on the hill I headed up to flatten out some puncture creating rocks and ended up having to re tape a massive section of board walk after someone had taken it off the pole it was secured to at one end. Not fun. Other bits and pieces needed tidying up and sorting out.

Thursday and the days the teams arrive and the village really takes shape. Most of the track work was done but a few braking bumps needed filling in and some branches needed cutting down to improve T.V coverage.  I say a few branches, this turned into an act of mass deforestation, cutting trees down about 5 meters back from the track all in the name of Red Bull T.V. It was fun but hard work but I came out looking like I had Small Pox from all the midgey bites as I was destroying their habitat. It came out looking superb on the coverage and I particularly enjoyed hanging out off a tree cutting down over hanging branches trying not to hit riders as they did their track walk. Unusually I only saw one big name rider coming down the track, the rest must have come after Peaty obviously delayed by his BBQ halfway down.

Part 2 on it's way.