You’ll probably have heard the results by now, if you’re interested, and you’ll know that Rachel Atherton was squeezed out of first place in the women’s event by Sabine Jonnier and Gee Atherton held off blistering rides from the likes of Greg Minnaar to take a win in front of mental home-crowd support. It’s hard to find the words to sum up what it’s like to see the World Cup live. It was noisy with rock music pumping out into the arena, and cow-bells and air-horns on the entire route, and incredible to be so close to the stars of the downhill scene as they hung out in the pits, returned to their tents, or shared a gondola to the top of the mountain. Walking the course form the top of the gondola you were up-close and personal with the riders hammering past at up to 60 kilometres per hour over huge boulders and drops on a gradient that had most of the spectators ending up flat on their backs.
The weather was stunning, over 20 degrees on the Saturday and sunny, so that Aonach Mor looked more like it was sitting in the Alps than in Scotland, and the rain held off on the Sunday to allow a good day of racing. FMFT walked down the entire mountain twice in order to bring you all the best form the weekend, and stamped and clapped in the arena to support the riders.
4-Cross was exciting and fast, and left one rider in Fort William A&E that evening, but it held nothing to the drama of the Downhill competition. The highlights were hard to pin down, obviously Gee Atherton’s win goes down as the perfect end to the weekend, but special mentions have to go to Steve Peat simply for being the crowd’s favourite and to Cedric Gracia for jumping the last drop into the arena cauldron no-handed as a dropped chain put him out of contention for a high finish.
Anyway, let’s shut up and let some pictures tell the story:
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