World Cup # 6 Canberra, Australia

I knew it was winter in Australia and had checked the forecast and it said it would be cold, but I still didn’t expect it to be as cold in Canberra, where only 8 months ago I was shading from the 30+ degree heat !! Although it was cold it was nearly as dry as it was in the summer, the track was hard pack and still covered in a loose unpredictable surface. There had been quite a few changes to the course since January, it was slightly longer and contained a few more rock sections and awkward obstacles. However the flat pedalling section to the finish was still there !

I almost got caught out in the dark as I again forgot that it gets dark early in winter and I was at the top of the course with only about 30mins of daylight and I still had to ride back into town ! I tagged onto a guy commuting and got towed back into town at quite a pace !

Practice went well, I really tried to keep some energy and not do too many practice runs as I knew how important it would be to feel fresh for the final. It was pretty windy all week and it made it pretty dangerous on some of the jumps at times. However all our dry practice would soon be useless as true to the weather forecast and the way it seems to be this year, the rain came on race day ! I don’t think they had seen rain for weeks here, but this certainly rained and having been so dry I never thought it would even get slightly muddy, but the finishing straight did get pretty sticky. Fortunately we managed to do the women’s qualifying in a dry patch of weather and the course was beginning to dry out a bit. It was still going to be pretty much impossible to clear the last jump as the run in was so sticky you just couldn’t generate any speed. I had a pretty clean run and posted the fastest time by just under a second with Rachel Atherton in 2nd and Sabrina in 3rd.

As soon as the men started qualifying it started to rain again and pretty much rained most of the time until our final. It was going to be really hard to know just how wet it would be up there and how slippery some of the sections would be. It was pretty windy and with my new National Champs jersey that are size XL I decided to opt for the skinsuit for the final to aid my way down the track. Fortunately the rain gave over in time for the last 5 or so girls and the wind didn’t seem to play too big a problem either. I made one mistake early on in the rocks and had to brake hard to avoid hitting a big rock, other than that I had a pretty good run and just tried to pedal as hard as I could to the finish. As I crossed the line there were no results and I was not sure if I had done enough, but I soon realised that I had taken the win ahead of Rachel and Sabrina. Once I had stopped breathing hard and my legs began to work again I worked my way back to the pits. It felt great to get another world cup win this season and just makes the points that bit closer for the final round in Schladming, Austria in 2 weeks time !