Ready, steady, go! We started into the 2012 race season with the 1st UCI Mountainbike worldcup in Pietermaritzburg/ South Africa. Even it’s just in the middle March we are racing and it is one month earlier as we used to race a worldcup. So because of different qualification rules for the crosscountry riders for Olympics and the wish of the UCI to start with a worldcup holding both crosscountry and downhill we were at the most exotic destination of the 2012 race calendar.
The race weekend start with ups and downs as Emmeline qualified 2nd in the women’s competition, Brook crashed, Damien got 19th and Markus 33rd. The point of departure seemed to be good for the race as Emmeline showed her strength already and Brook is known for doing well after big crashes or random qualifiers.
Saturday practice and the weather forecast brought another dynamic in our preparation for Sunday’s finals as there was a good chance for heavy rain.
Contrary to the forecasts the weather was good on Sunday morning and everything was right for a fair and exciting race.
Girls were the first to come and Emmeline was able to score right away with a 3rd place behind an incredible riding Tracy Hannah and Manon Carpenter.
At the men’s race Markus was the first of the MS Mondraker squad to come down. Unfortunately he crashed and so he finished in last position. Brook was ready for the race and was pedaling hard, but after the crash in the qualifying and the problems during the practice runs a 19th place fast the best place he could end up. Damien had a solid run with just little mistakes, which already make a big difference on a challenging track like the one of Pietermaritzburg- he end up I 25th position.
We are now in 4th position in the overall team standings, which is a promising point of departure for the rest of the 2012 race season. Now we are going back to Europe for testing for the next worldcup round in Val Di Sole Italy.
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Big thanks to:
special thanks to Michael Kull and Schwalbe tires, who support us with awesome black gold for this specific race!
