Team BikeRadar success in Canada

Donny's final run (BikeRadar)

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Team BikeRadar have been in Canada for two weeks now, this weekend saw us heading to Bromont near Montreal for the World Cup race. Now when I was at school, scientists were saying we would have ‘global warming’, fancy telling everyone it was going to get hotter…

If they’d told us it was going to rain and flood everywhere or called it ‘Global Raining’ maybe we would have paid a little more attention! What am I going on about? Well it’s rained here in Canada every day for two weeks straight, we’ve spent as much time at the hosepipe and the washing machine as we have on the hill!

Bromont is a venue that has been on the international calendar before, hosting the World Champs in 1992 and a World Cup nine years ago. Memories of those tracks stayed with me and I wasn’t surprised to see steep technical sections mixed up with flowing wood sections and a few big drops thrown in for good measure.

The track looked really good fun to ride as we walked it on Friday. It was fun to ride, but it was also very, very tough for all the riders after the heavy rain added its own special features to the track.

A couple of sections became point and shoot affairs, setting the bike up and letting it roll until you hit a berm or a deep rut to help you change direction. A great challenge, which really got the crowd higher up the hill than usual to cheer on the riders come race day!

Race day was good to the BikeRadar team, with Marc coming right back on form and back on the podium in fifth place.

It was a great ride, which had the crowd going crazy as they watched him on the big screen in the finish area. After a tough season, which started with an injury, this was at last the comeback he was looking for. His confidence returned, we’re sure he will now go on to regain a solid result in the World Cup overall where he is now up to twelfth position. Check out Marc’s race week blog entries.

4X was again the main focus of my weekend and the track was to prove the crowd favourite on the night. Anything can happen in 4X and the long one minute track which had been rain soaked for a month stood up really well to the battering.

The rutted corners, rock steps and big double jumps all added to the uncertainty and anticipation for the riders, which always means excitement for the crowd!

I managed to battle my way through to the quarter final after dodging Jurg Meir dive bombing the landing of the big double and nearly wiping us both out.

I ended up twelfth which was ok given the conditions and crazy take outs going on. I’m looking forward now to my favourite track at the last round in Austria next month.

Donny was on a flier all week but a stray root and a big tree got the better of his final race run, unfortunately. You can check out one of Donny’s practice runs here, taken from his Pov 1 headcam footage at the weekend.

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