La Bresse World Cup round 6

La Bresse was a pure DH bred venue without the usual XC and 4X to spice things up. This venue has only been used once back in 2009, which happened to be my first ever world cup too. It’s a one of a kind track for sure. It’s mainly grass and rocks the whole way down; a bit like our own Moelfre at home but on steroids.
The track had minor changes to what I had ridden before which was a plus for me. It’s finally getting to the stage where most of the world cups I go to I’m revisiting. This helped out a lot and Fridays practise went as well as I wanted it too. There were a few more jumps on the track since last time, which is always a plus for the fun factor. I got them done in my first few runs and concentrated on getting some different lines ridden, because as always, the course will be a different one by race day. On my first run I followed a rider through the lower really high speed compressions to see if he would do the last jump. Then I could then pop over behind him. I was a bit worried when I caught up pumping when he was pedalling like a nutter towards the take off. The last jump was pretty big, around 30-40 ft i guess. The thing is, it was on the limit to how far you could hop with the speed you had and didn’t really have a good kick to it at all. I slowed down and pulled up only to have a first class view of the rider take the meaning of case to a new high. The bike stayed on the upslope of the landing, now very worse for wear. He slid in line with the landing on his front with the bike taking the full force. Luckily he seemed fine and walked away carrying his bike. The jump was closed down for a while and the landing extended. Still... the first time I did it I made sure I pulled up with everything I had.
The course wasn’t very tiring just learning it so I did like 8-9 runs; being the first time riding properly since Whistler I may have been a bit keen to refill my veins with adrenalin. The cut spike’s were hooking up really well on the grass but after the day being so dry everything packed down and for Sunday I was looking to put my new high roller 2 tyres on. Just before I came out, Tom at One Industries sent me the new editions of the infamous high roller. They are pretty similar as they were pretty much the favourite to use anyway. They have now got a bigger cornering edge to them, roll faster and have a better braking edge.
I rode to the venue on Sunday with them on with 4 practise runs in mind. I did a run with my new Go Pro chest camera on in the morning, was really handy to see it back on the laptop after! I was trying out some new lines but it was a full run down, check out La Bresse from my point of view, it’s on the La Bresse video.
Going up for qualifying I was a bit more nervous than usual. I sprinted out the gate hard, as you could see from the go pro run; it’s full on and fast straight away. I was a bit surprised how much the track was blown out but it was still good all the same. I went with the same game plan as usual and just had a fast but risk-free run down. I didn’t really have any times where I noticeably felt good but I didn’t think that it wouldn’t be bad. If I’m honest at any other world cup I would have hoped to come around 60th, so not great but that’s racing. I heard I was in 78th place over the loud speaker. There was no point in looking or waiting, I just cruised back to the pits knowing I would be way down by the time everyone was finished. Later looking at the times I saw that top 3 were split by 3 seconds and from there to 80th was less than 10 seconds. That’s the smallest gap in I’ve ever seen by a long way. It’s pretty cool that everyone was literally tenths and a fair bit of the time hundredths apart. That’s formula 1 territory.
A bit angry that I didn’t get through I spun up the 6km hill back to the apartment in the rain. It was the end of the weekend for me really. It was not all negative for us though, Manon did us proud with an 8th place, still smoking the juniors!
We are in Morzine now, it’s wicked here and Gibbins is around too, we are hopefully doing a shoot in a few days so check back for some footage soon!
Harry Molloy