World Cup 8 – Schladming, Austria

It is always hard to be fully motivated for the final World Cup of the year when it happens after the World Championships. This year in particular was hard as the travel back from Australia was long, I had a real feeling of emptiness as my focus of the last 12 months (the worlds) was over and I still hadn’t achieved my goal, the women’s world cup had already been won and just to top it off we were going to the hardest track of the year for the world cup final and one which I have never done well at !!

Fortunately the weather was on our side and a bit of late summer sun was very welcome. The track at Schladming is always a tough one and this year was no exception, in fact I think it was the roughest it has ever been. I wasn’t feeling great in practice as I still felt really tried mentally and physically from the last few weeks. I did minimal practice, but as the track was changing so much it didn’t really matter ! As with every year at Schladming I always struggle with my hands pumping up and then my grip goes and I have to use 2 fingers on my back brake so I always fade during the final stages of the Schladming course. Sadly this year was no different and my qualifying run was very pedestrian, finishing up in 7th place. I felt as though I should rest up ready for the final, but we still had another day of practice and I felt as though I really needed to just deal with my hands and try and make the best of the run, so from then on I just did full runs and tried to learn how to hang on during the last section. I started to feel a bit more manageable and during my final practice run on Sunday morning I switched to dry tyres and it finally clicked and I wanted my final run to be timed as I felt like I had ridden the track as good as I was going to !

Going in to the final I was pretty relaxed, my legs felt pretty dead during my warm up, and I just wanted to get down the track and get on the podium, that really was my goal for the day. I had a pretty good run on the top section, I fatigued pretty badly in the middle section and was already using 2 fingers on my back brake, I then managed to get myself back together for the last section, however I still felt slow over the final stages of the course. However when I crossed the line I was pleased with my time, I did a 4.54 which was 7 seconds quicker than the fastest qualifying time, but I still didn’t think it would be good enough for the win, I was hoping for a top 3. However as I sat in the hotseat, rider after rider failed to beat my time, most of them I could see on the screen were making mistakes and losing valuable time. Somehow I ended up winning the final world cup of the season ! It felt fantastic as it had been 5 months since I had last won a world cup and I really had struggled at times during the season to race well, so it was a fantastic way to wrap up the 2009 season. It also gave me just enough points to squeeze into 2nd place in the overall World Cup standings which was a great way to end the year.

So that was it, the end of yet another year of World Cup racing, 2nd in the World Cup and 2nd at the World Champs, not quite what I had hoped for, but a pretty good attempt and not something that I should be ashamed of. Next year sees only 6 rounds of the World Cup Series and on mostly long technically challenging tracks, so it’s lots of DH and Moto riding for me this winter.