World Cup, Round 1, Maribor, Slovenia

The first round of the 2010 Downhill Would Cup series was held in Maribor, Slovenia. I was not too sure on how long it would take to get there and as its my first World Cup I decided to leave early to make sure that I was there with enough time to do everything I needed to do.

I arrived early Wednesday and spent the day sorting bike stuff out and I also took a walk up the track to see what it was like. The weather forecaster was for it to be wet for the whole race and it was quite obverse that it had been raining a lot before we got there.

The track looked amazing. It looked pretty long and was already quite rough form previous races. It looked like it had a really good flow to it. It had a lot of roots the whole way down and a lot of high-speed sections as well. O and of course there was the famous rock garden in there as well.

Practise was going well. It was so much fun even though it was raining a lot it was still amazing. I tried not to put myself under any pressure even thought I really wanted to qualify in the top 80 for the final so I just thought that I would try and do the best run I could and see where that put me.

Qualifying went well, I was still really nervous at the top but as soon as I started my run I relaxed in to it. I ended up in 47th which I was stoked on. I had a good run and was so happy make that top 80 final for Sunday.

More rain came down overnight and I don't think it stopped raining all day. Because of the wind on Sunday they did not run the lift for a while so we ended up only getting 1 practice run in. I was not too bothered about this as I already felt peaty good on the track. I headed up early for my race run just in-case there was any problems with the lift I didn't want to miss my run. Being up there so early made me quite nervous but I just tried to block that out and stay relaxed.

My race run went well, the track was much rougher. I had a good run down, I think I went a bit safe but I was happy to make it down clean and get a solid result for my first World Cup.

I finished of the 62nd place which I am so happy with.

Chilling with Joe Smith at the end of race runs, Joe got 8th, First ever World Cup top 10.

Looking forward to heading back up to Fort William again for the World Cup in 3 weeks time.

Thanks to, Specialized, Superstar components, Funn, 661, Maxxis and Axo.

Olie

Riding Shots by Jacob Gibbins, http://jacobgibbins.co.uk/