I say this every year but no sooner has the season started
its already come to an end. It felt like only a month ago I was setting foot on
to a plane heading for South Africa excited to race with a new team behind me,
a new bike and good winter’s training under my belt. Since then 7 World Cup
rounds and a handful of UK nations and other events and now only one race left. The BDS final at
Llangollen, Wales this weekend. So it is not all done yet!
I have just got back from the airport from a great trip to
the Hafjell bike park in Norway. This is my first trip to Norway and what a
beautiful place it is. It’s a sparsely populated country which makes for
fantastic landscapes of mountains, lakes and rivers everywhere you turn.
This was a new track to me and most people. It had been used
for the European championships a few years ago. My first impressions after
walking the track were that it looked awesome and was going to be such a fun track
to ride. It had a great mix of sections and had pretty much every sort of
section that you could have on a downhill track on it. It was a awesome track
to practise with all the jumps and high speed sections not to mention the 70
KPH field section in the middle.
For my qualifying run I went it with the approach of a clean
fast run was what I needed to do. I felt like I made a few mistakes in my run
and didn’t carry speed as well as I would have liked to through some sections.
Despite that, I qualified in 50th position, enough for the final. I
walked the track and found a few great lines and was excited for the finals. My
race run was clean but I didn’t feel like I attached enough. I ended up 53rd
on the day. This result along with a very consistent year put me 56th
overall in the series which I’m really happy with as one of my big goals was to
be constant and finished in the top 80 ready for next year.
So only one more race left and that’s it for the 2012
season. Now, I’m heading off for Llangollen and the final round of the BDS
series.
Here is a helmet cam from one of the other track in the bike
park that we road after the race.
I have attached a few photos from the race as well.
