World Cup Round 7 - Val Di Sole, Italy

The team travelled to Italy this week straight from there base in the Czech Republic for the final round of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup Series.

It has been a long road, literally at times, but the team showed a tremendous spirit supporting each other through ups and downs on our final World Cup of this season.

Arriving on Tuesday evening, it was straight to work on Wednesday as the riders started preparations. The team staff soon got to work in making our pit area look as good as any in a large exhibition area deep in the Val Di Sole mountains. True to its name “The Valley of Sun” was scorching throughout the week hitting highs of 38 degrees.

As the riders made there way out on course our expo area was bombarded by cycling fans from around the globe, picking up literature on our sponsors, team photo cards and taking pictures of our unique Cannondale Scalpel bikes.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were both practice days and the riders all came to the same conclusion – It would be the hardest race of the year! The course was set on the side of the mountain and featured so many steep climbs followed by rocky technical downs giving the riders no time for rest and with the heat soaring it was going to be a very tough weekend for our athletes.

Before we knew it, Saturday was upon us and an early start as Rourke Croeser kicked things off at 9.30am in the Elite Under 23 category. Keen to get a good start after a bad one the previous week, Rourke flew around the opening start loop trying to stay out of trouble as crashes made life very difficult. After lap two, it became clear something was wrong and on lap three, Rourke climbed off to his utter devastation. Having built up some amazing form it was unclear what was wrong but sometimes athletes just have bad days and with the World Championships looming, his bad luck must surely be out of the way.

Sunday would be a similar day with another early start, this time for Junior rider, Alex Baker. A great start saw Alex push into the top forty, again carnage pursued with crashes in the start loop and bottle necks in the singletrack. The heat and the opening had been too much for our youngster though and a bout of sickness after the first climb meant he was always struggling. This didn’t deter him though and he battled through to a 70th place position in a field of well over a hundred showing fantastic character on a very difficult day. Afterwards Alex described the event “My hardest day on a bike”.

The results hadn’t been quite what the team had hoped for but our expectations were only due to the amazing form that our riders have produced this season. The rest of the team rallied around our two World Cup riders once again showing what a great bond this team has.

Our guest, John Whittington (CNP Orbea) raced the Elite event in the afternoon matching his result from the week before in the Czech Republic, Liam Killeen took a steady 28th place. A great sprint saw Annie Last finish 10th in the Womens Elite race while Kenta Gallagher took 30th in the Under 23 and Grant Ferguson 5th Junior rounding out a good weekend for the Brits.

All that was left was to watch the downhill, chill out in our team pit area and celebrate what has been a truly remarkable first season as a UCI Mountain Bike Team. We have learnt so much in the last few months and are very proud of what our athletes have achieved. The team spirit and togetherness has left us with a huge sense of pride. We owe a huge amount of gratitude to our wonderful staff who have worked tirelessly over this campaign and to our sponsors who provide the very best equipment on the market.

The World Cup season maybe over but in two weeks we travel to the World Championships in Switzerland and then to Plymouth for the final round of the British National season – for now though we can reflect on 2011 as a big success and look forward to moving onwards and upwards in 2012.

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