World Cup # 1 – Maribor, Slovenia

As I was packing my bags for the first world cup of the year I decided to check the weather forecast, just to decide what to pack....I did not want to see what I saw...rain everyday !! As we all know most weather forecasts are not the most accurate, but this one sadly was. It rained pretty much the entire time we were in Maribor and the track just got rough and rutted with all the rain, turning into a really sketchy track to race !

I didn’t do too much practice on the first day as I knew the weather would get worse and the track would change alot. However in the little practice I did do I managed to crash really hard, when my hand blew off the handlebars when I hit a hole, hitting my head so hard. It was the first day out for my new painted helmet aswell so I was gutted that I had scratched it already !!

The following day it really did rain all day and I woke up feeling like I had been run over ! I was aching all over, not a great start to my weekend. However I still enjoyed practice as it was fun to ride in these conditions, it was not fun however to have all the cleaning of kit, helmet and my poor new bike every run !

Qualifying came around pretty quick, the weather was not great and the fog at the top meant you could barely see the first jump. I had a moment on that first jump, I think due to the fact that I couldn’t see the take off until I was on it. I nearly looped out and ended up giving myself some more whiplash on the very heavy landing !! I then went into safety mode and really just rode the course, ending up in 7th. Not a great place, but I still had the final to make it up.

Weather conditions did not improve much and the rain turned into wind which meant that the gondola’s could not work, so we resorted to driving to the top for the race. It’s a 20min drive up a mountain road, and I was sat in the back of a van. By the time I got to the top I was feeling really travel sick. Not the best start to the race !

I knew I needed to be more aggressive in the final, but I never seemed to be able to let go enough to attack the track. I had an ok top section, but then started making mistakes at the bottom. I ended up stopped against a tree and then lost a lot of momentum in one section at the bottom. I ended up back in 8th position. A very disappointing start to my world cup, but one which I now need to forget about and move on to the next 2 weekends racing in the US in preparation for the next world cup in Fort William.

Tracy