WC #1
It's a good thing I didn't have my goals and heart set on another WC overall title, because luck was not on my side this weekend. After a good crash in practice the day of qualifying, I dusted myself off and managed to finish 6th in the quali. I was too tentative in my run and just didn't attack the course. In the end the times were actually pretty close, with the exception of Dan Atherton who killed everyone by a little over a second. Second place was .6 sec faster and there were lots of guys within 100ths of seconds.
I was hoping for a better race day and was feeling good in practice, but with a course that was so unpredictable you just didn't know what would happen. Well what happened to me I would have never guessed. I was leading my heat and going into turn 2 I hit the sweet NON BREAKAWAY GATE that the UCI uses and it almost whipped me off my bike. I was able to save it and thought I would still make it through, but then when I went to pedal I could feel there was something wrong with my back wheel. How in the world did my rear skewer come undone I will probably never know, but what I do know is it cost me to advance. Hurts to travel all this way to have something as stupid and freak as that happen.
In the end it was a final which had only one rider that had ever even been in a final which was Guido. I was thinking Slavick would win as he was looking good out of the start all night, but he came out of his pedal right from the gun and Alverez lead his first main event from start to finish.
Today is the DH and the course is crazy fast and very rough. I will be doing a little bit of interviewing for Freecaster with some of the athletes at the bottom which will not make the live show as they don't have the proper wireless audio for that, but will make the edited re-play which you can view at freecaster.com
Posted by Brian on May 11, 2008 03:13 AM