My five week European tour of the first, second and third World Cup of the season is officially on its last week. The first World Cup of the season was held in Vigo, Spain. Vigo sits on the west coast of Spain just above Portugal. Beautiful beaches minuets from the race venue, pine and eucalyptus trees all over making it feel a lot like Santa Barbara where I call home. 

The venue was placed in the hills above the city, just a short drive from all the main hotels. The course was a bit short but well built. Some real steep technical bits followed by some flatter flowing bits where it was curtail to keep your speed. Once out of the trees at the bottom you have a good petal section before you are beside the 4x coming in to the finish step down. I was feeling very strong all week in practice and knew that if I could just put down a solid run with few mistakes in the final I would be up there in the results. The crowd was amazing come Saturday for the Qualifying. The Spanish culture seemed to be very in to there cycling and I felt rather at home since I was staying with a local and his family there, who I had been hanging out and riding with the week before the race.  Qualifying went well, finishing in the top 30 with a mellow run just wanting to gauge where I needed to pull some time off for the following days finals.

Sunday; race day for the DH, which had a packed crowd even in the morning practice. The vibe and energy from the crowd was radical. My race run was solid with only one major mistake in a rather curtail couple turns where exit speed was rather important. I came in to these turns to be greeted with a spectator with a Chain Saw, revving it with each approaching rider. Needless to say I was a bit surprised to hear a chain saw and for the split second of thinking about what it was I lost my focus on that section and lost a bit of speed. With that aside it was a decent run that I was happy with it for the fist race of the season. Times were very close for the top 20 aside from the first 3 or 4 riders. I finished in 20^th position with a bit of hot seat time and was only a two seconds off of top 10 finish so I was content with that being the first race, and holding down the 21^st spot in the World Cup Overall Rankings.

The Lisbon Downtown race was the following week just a 3 hour drive from the base of Spain where we were for Vigo. We arrived on a Thursday and did the waking inspection the next day on Friday. The course, which needless to say was crazy, cobblestone and marble steps from top to bottom with a massive street crossing that had rail road tracks imbedded in it. Saturday came and with my 4 practice runs out of the way it was time for qualifying. On my qually run one of the wooden built turns toward the top of the course came out from underneath me causing a near death experience and the course officials along with the event organizers decided to put me in the finals considering the mishap with the course even though I offered to do a re-run to earn my place. Finals came later that day and it was a completely different experience trying to race down cobblestone and marble steps. The course was completely lined with spectators, it seemed as if people just walking through the streets decided to stop and watch the action. The course was marked with hay bales and ran in between dark alleyways and tunnels just outside of peoples houses, finishing just down by the beach side. The Extreme sports channel in Europe had the event on live television all throughout Europe so it was good to be there as I had young kids and people telling me they saw me on TV when I returned back to Vigo the following week. In the finals I managed to come a bit too hot in to the same first turn that came undone underneath me and slid out in to it crashing pretty hard and taking myself out of the running for a good placing. It was extremely hard to determine how hard you could go on those cobblestones and marble steps but it was fun to be there and have a new challenge outside of usual Mountain Biking events, although this was pretty far from it. I had just a short drive back to Vigo for a week of training and a bit of down time before the next World Cup.

The Second World Cup on my stop was in Fort William, Scotland. One of my favorite World Cup courses to date.  I was happy to be there and was excited for the race on the weekend as it is usually one of the largest spectator turn outs on any of our stops worldwide. The course was pretty much exactly the same as the last time I raced here in 2004, real rough and fast up top with some tech tree sections in the middle and some good pedaling and jumps at the bottom. The weather was horrible all week, on Wednesday when we showed up to walk the course it was snowing when we got out of the gondola and had a wind chill that was way to cold. It rained every day and was amazingly cold and windy. The wind was a huge factor for the course as some riders were literally being blown off course up top due to the massive side winds.  In Scotland its either raining or its going to rain. One minuet the sun will be out and blue skys surrounding the mountains and within minuets the clouds will come flying in and it will be raining dime-sized raindrops. Practice was going very well, I felt very strong, and knew that this was a course that I could do well on as it is quite long, very rough and physical being extremely similar to what I train on. Come Sunday time for qualifying runs it was raining a bit, with some strong winds up top making it even harder to get all your lines and not get pushed off course. I wanted to put down a solid run, nothing to wild, as I just wanted to gauge my speed and see where I could make up time for the final. I finished 19^th in the qualifiers with a run I knew I could take some serious time off of as just pedaling a bit more in and out of sections, and hitting some rough straight-aways a bit harder, all which I knew I could do, can cut massive seconds away on a race run.  I had a great run going up top, getting all my lines and holding my speed very well considering the wind and conditions. I came in to the trickiest bit of the course in the steep woods which had become peanut butter filled holes the size of your wheels over the course of the week and went off course crashing in to the spectators lining the section. I lost quite a bit of time sitting there stuck in the mud and struggled to get back up to speed. I finished 34^th with a time that was 7 seconds slower then my qualifying run which would have placed me in 19^th in the final had I just had the same time as my qualifying.

Although the bad position I still gained some points in qualifying and currently hold down the 24^th spot in the overall ranking in the World Cup after 2 races, with 4 more to go, so I will have more chances to get back up in the points.

I’m off too the third World Cup stop in Willingen, Germany taking place this coming weekend. See you there!

A big thanks to SRAM/RockShox for there help and support while over here for the World Cups.