First up was National Champs at Ae Forest on the 18th of July. Of what I can remember it was a bit of a wet one. The track had a few pretty good changes which was nice to see. I punctured in my seeding run and ended up 14th in the race. I messed up at the top and stopped in a corner but apart from that I had a good run. Steve Peat came down and won the national champs jersey with a stormer of a time!
Straight from Scotland I rushed home as I had a few hours to clean my kit and meet up with Rich Thomas and Jacob Gibbins to start are travels to Champery World cup round 4, Switzerland. Champery was an amazing course! It was pretty hard to do to say the least. After we walked it Rich and I made a little pact saying that we would both do all of the jumps in our first runs. So we did! Baring in mind there were nearly 30 very big jumps in the track, it was quite scary! When it rained it made the course a lot harder, you just couldn’t slow down in places you needed to. I went over the bars in my qualifying run and my bike was caught in the catch netting. My gloves were covered in mud. I tried getting my bike out of the catch netting but it was stuck pretty bad, when i finally got my bike out and the right way up and my seat pointing the right way again I began trying to take my gloves off so that i could hold the bars without slipping off. I thought i had my slip on gloves on but it turned out they were Velcro ones so they wouldn’t come off. People were shouting at me a lot by now so i decided to try ride the rest with no grip on the bars. I made it down just but couldn’t do the last jumps. I came in and surprisingly after all that still qualified mid-pack in the top 80.
My race run turned out much the same. I just got through the section where I fell in my qualifying and went over the bars again just a little further down. I was pretty annoyed as I felt my hole run I went slowly so that I wouldn’t fall off. I ended up 49th place which was ok but knowing I could have been right up there if I didn’t crash was hard to take.
I chilled out in Morzine, French Alps with my mate Jamie for a few days to get some riding in whilst we were out there. Was awesome to just chill out and ride for a few days!
It was then to Italy for the next round of the World cups at Val Di Sole. This track was seriously rocky rooty and generally hardcore the hole way down. I felt pretty beaten up after practise, it was a very physical course. It was a constant gradient the hole way down which was pretty steep but the ground was so dusty and loose it was really hard and kind of felt really slow everywhere when really you were going fast. I messed up big time in qualifying. I miss judged braking into a slow technical section where I hit a high line too fast and couldn’t make it over the next root section straight enough. My front wheel seemed to disappear straight away and I went over the bars down the course. It wasn’t a massive crash but my bike was a bit twisted up. I tried making the time up but it was a mistake as I flew all over the place down the rest of the course. I just missed out on qualifying with a 89th just a second off. This was the first time I hadn’t qualified this year, I was pretty annoyed and it took a while to get over it.
We went back straight after the race to get home in time to rest up for British DH series round 4. We broke down around 5 miles from Calais which was something we could have done without but we all made it home to see the sun rise Tuesday morning so not all was bad.
Thanks to Rich, Jacob, Jamie and everyone else that has made the last month a good one away!
Thanks to Last, Rezurgence, Lifestyle Ford, 2026 distribution, Nema Clothing, DMR, Funn, 661, Maxxis, KMC, Lezyne, Mojo suspension, Kali and Shimano.
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