Tracy Moseley's latest update from the world of DH racing.. this time from the Swiss World Cup DH at the beginining of June.
Champery is a new venue for the World Cup circuit in 2007. It is in a beautiful dead end valley just the
other side of the mountains from Les Gets and Morzine. I had heard the track was going to be technical
and steep. It was most definitely both ! It was not technical because of the roots and rocks, or tricky
lines, it was just so steep that just getting down the track was a challenge in itself ! I was really
enjoying practice and managed to stay upright pretty much the whole weekend.
To keep on with the
theme so far this year, we had quite a lot of rain the night before the race which made practice in the
morning pretty tough. I got down fine and was feeling confident for the race. Qualifying time came and
the track was drying up quite quickly. I had a good start, but just picked up a bit too much speed in one
corner and could not slow down enough for the next one and ended up sliding into a tree. After getting
back on I realised I had pushed my brake lever down, so 2 corners later after crashing again because I
couldn't reach my brake lever, I stopped and pushed it back up.
I got back into a rhythm and rode the
next few sections pretty well. Then another moment of over speeding ended up with me crashing into a
marshal and my bike ending up in some catch fencing at the bottom of a chute, another quick stop to
realign my brake lever and I limped across the line to a very disappointing 11th place.
I realised for the final I was just going to have to take it easy and stay on. Sadly it went wrong pretty
early on. I lost control on the first corner and slid into the banking. Another 2 crashes later and I again
crossed the line this time to take the lead, but not for long. The last 10 riders came down and I got
pushed back to a 7th place finish. I was really disappointed as I felt like I should have done well on this
track as was getting on well in practice. However it was not to be.
Local girl Marielle Saner took the
win ahead of Emmeline Ragot and World Cup leader Sabrina Jonnier. My poor result this weekend
pushed me back to 4th overall in the World Standings and left me with some work to do over the next 3 World Cups.
Ben Quinn
