The wave of success started with Leonard who became in-official world champion of the mechanics in frame of the “boxer worlds”, continues with the 3rd place and first podium of Lewis Buchanan at the junior world champions race and finishes with Steve Smith with a 2nd place and his first top 3 result in a top UCI race.
Lewis got into the race with serious chance on the world champion title. Unfortunately he bend his right pedal in the top section and wasn’t able to pedal anymore. Nevertheless he was pushing hard and so he was still able to get on the podium with he shared with Troy Brosnan of Monster Specialized and Neko Mullaly.

After the juniors the race was on for the elite riders. First to come down was Ryan Vanderham and his brother Thomas Vanderham, who are not member of MS EVIL RACING, but good friends of our team. Thomas got into the hotseat and was able to finish in 34th position- not bad for someone who is known for being a freerider.

Brook, Luke and Filip came in a package and were able to finish in top places. Especially Brook underlined his results of his 2010 season with a 12th place and Luke came back after a bad crash and crankworx and a solid but not outstanding season. Filip ended up 23rd position after he finished 8th in the 4X two days before the DH race.

Steve was the last men of MS EVIL RACING to go and we were thrilled as he came thru the 2 splits with awesome times and an incredible run. Just a view seconds before the finish and in the last technical section he had a bad mistake and almost got off the bike. Luckily he was bale to stay on the bike and got in the hotsteat. Just one racer after he took place in the hotseat Sam Hill came down and beat Steve by 2.63 sec. After that no other rider was able to beat the times of Sam or Steve and so the podium was fixed with Sam on the top box, Steve in 2nd and Minaar in 3rd.

We want to congratulate Sean Heimdal and the Monster Specialized team on their two world champion titles- that was a demonstration, but hopefully we are able to strike back in 2011.

Now it’s time for us to say good by till we are back in 2011 and for saying thank you to all the people who helped us to make this happen.

Thanks to:
Kevin Walsh, Gabe Fox, Evan M. Choltco- Delvin and Leonard of Evil bikes
Dave Weagle- mastermind behind the delta link
Michael Kull of Schwalbe
Mark Fitzsimmons, Christophe and Justin of Fox Racing Shox
Michael Tobler of e13
Thomas Davy of Mavic
Gabriele Mazzarolo, Claudia Marcolin, the race support crew and Hans van der Gried of Alpinestars
Sebastian Keck of Holmenkol
WTB¬
Cole
Gravity
all the people at Red Bull

Special thanks to:
Christian Schandl- first mechanic, bus driver and technical boss
Benedikt Rieder- race support truck driver and utility men
Peter Kaufmann- mechanic since the beginning of MS-RACING
Martin Newhill- body mechanic and sunshine of MS-RACING
Igor- interim mechanic
Domenico and Alex of MTBfreeride.tv
“morning breath” for their awesome designs
all the family members in the background.

Furthermore we want to thank all the people who might have been involved in our success we maybe don’t know by name or we forgot to list above- thank you!

Windham is a quiet small venue, but with big potential and a lot of nice people who make the event happen. The courses seemed to be pretty good and so the DH course was not really long, but fast. The 4X course looked good too because of big rocks, big oversea containers for jumps and big doubles at the end. Unfortunately there weren’t a lot of places to pass on the track and so it was again all about the start.

Filip was the only racer of MS EVIL RACING who was racing 4X. Because of some hard sections in the course he decided to race the qualification on the DH bike. Even he had a big mistake by casing the last big double he qualified 8th, which was not the best starting position for the race. Filip did well in the first heat, but hasn’t been able to survive the 2nd one- Filip finished in 13th position.

After a 7th, a 12th a 16th and a 21st place in the DH qualifying we had a good base for the finals. As mentioned before the track was pretty fast and short and so the times were pretty close- everything was perfect for a thrilling race.

The first surprise was Lewis with an amazing run. With 6.55 sec of the lead he became 12th in the race, was the fastest junior of the day and finished up 2nd in the junior overall ranking. Brook demonstrated again his skills with his 2nd top ten result. He finished 8th just behind Steve and got 18th in the world cup overall ranking in his first elite season. Steve got 7th with 2 tenth of a second of the podium and finished 10th overall. The team got 3rd in the team ranking of the day and finished 7th overall.

Overall we had a pretty good world cup season and we are happy with the results. Now we are looking forward to the season highlight of mountain bike racing the UCI mountain bike world champion ships in Mount Saint Anne/ Canada.

Stay tuned and follow our racers on freecaster.com.

Check out the impressions of Colin Meagher…

Next stop Windham/ New York- stay tuned!

Back to square one: after a view world cups in rainy conditions we arrived in Commezzadura and the weather forecast said rainy conditions for Tuesday but promised good weather for the weekend. The course was a little different than it was in 2008 for the world championships, but Steve, Luke, Filip, Brook and Lewis were looking forward to race on that track.

Because of the fact the world cup of Val di Sole was a triple event with four-cross and cross country the downhill qualification happens on Fridays, which meant limited training till the qualifications. Nevertheless all MS EVIL riders did well and were able to qualify for the race. Especially noteworthy is the 28th place of our junior Lewis, who was struggling with mechanicals and crashes at most of the world cups before. The fact that all riders are in the finals made us looking forward to race days as all of them were in promising positions for the race and the conditions for the race seemed to be good.

On Sunday Filip was the first rider for MS EVIL RACING to go and unfortunately he start with a mechanical. In the end he became 75 and was more than disappointed, as he felt good after he missed the world cup of Champery because of a strained neck. Brook was the next rider to come and he got into the race with a lot of self-confidence after his 6th place of Champery. He had a good run, but couldn’t beat the fabulous time of the almost unknown Austrian Markus Pekoll. In the end Brook became 13th, which is another result, which helps him to establish himself in the top 20 world cup elite. Next rider to come was Luke. He tried to make it in the finish as he had some bad crashes in the races before. He got 26th and gains some self-confidence for the upcoming and really important races in overseas. Lewis crossed the finish line in 3rd position, which was awesome as Brook was still 2nd at that moment. Steve was the last MS EVIL rider to come and after an awesome run he jumped into the hot seat till Marc Beaumont came down. In the end Steve became 5th, which is his best world cup result in his career and his first podium in a UCI mountain bike world cup.

Steve in 5th, Brook in 13th, Lewis in 16th, Luke in 26th and Filip in 75th position add up to a 2nd place in the team results for Val di Sole.

MS EVIL RACING team manager Lukas Haider „this weekend was a pleasure! Being on site watching Steve on his first world cup podium, 16 year old Lewis ending up 16th in the middle of the top elite of the UCI world cup and Brook with another top result is just amazing and pays off for all the work which happens in the background thru mechanics, sponsors and the management. We want to thank all our sponsors but especially Schwalbe tires and Michael Kull for their support.”

MS Evil Racing was on site with Steve, Luke, Brook and Lewis, but Filip unfortunately crashed hard on his head the weekend before Champery and was unable to make the trip to Champery on doctors advice.

In qualifying some riders stepped their game up in the wet like Wyn Masters and the MS Evil rider Brook MacDonald who qualified 11th. Unfortunately all other MS EVIL riders didn’t fare so well in qualifying crashing and ending up disappointed with their qualifying results. The team results were as follows: 32nd place for Luke, 51st place for Steve and 86th place for Lewis. Everyone was ready for race day to make amends for their mishaps in qualifying. Steve and Luke looked strong until the first split, but again the hill got the better if them, sending them to the ground and out of podium contention for the weekend.
So it was up to Brook to carry the torch for MS/Evil for the weekend. Brook came through with an extremely impressive run, he ended in 6th place just missing a podium appearance by a small margin. This was Brook’s best result in the World Cup series in his young career and one of the best results for MS EVIL RACING team in 2010.

MS EVIL RACING team manager Lukas Haider “It was amazing to see Brook prove his talent in these conditions and a pleasure to see him in the top 10 of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in Champery!”

1. Gee Atherton GBR/ Atherton Racing
2. Greg Minaar RSA/ Santa Cruz Syndicate
3. Brendan Fairclough GBR/ Monster Energy Specialized
4. Sam Blenkinsop NZL/ Lapierre international
5. Damien Spagnolo FRA/ Mondraker Factory Team
6. Brook MacDonald NZL/ MS EVIL RACING
40. Steve Smith CAN/ MS EVIL RACING
46. Luke Strobel USA/ MS EVIL RACING

Full results on uci.ch

Stay tuned for the next episodes…

After a world cup weekend affected by loads of rain, we had good weather from Monday on and so it would have been a good time for just riding and testing. Nevertheless MS EVIL RACING decided to do some sightseeing and so we went to the world of Red Bull better known as Salzburg.
First off all we visited the international team manager of Steve and Luke in the head quarter of Red Bull in Fuschl. It’s a quiet cool building without any red Bull signs, but really cool architecture. While Steve and Filip got some stuff of the new Red Bull athletes collection the rest of the team had the chance to have closer look into what’s going on in the heart of Red Bull.

Right after that we had a date in Salzburg city for a sightseeing tour in the Hangar 7, which is a kind of museum for all the airplanes of the so-called Flying Bulls. We got it managed to get a special tour with the boss of the “flying bulls”, who led us through the holy halls of the Red Bull Hangar 8, where Red Bull keeps a crowed of mechanics and engineers busy with restoring old airplanes and keep them running. It’s really special to get into this service hangar and to have a look in the inside of the infamous DC-6. The boss of the flying bulls mentioned that every once in a while the boss of Red Bull Didi Mateschitz himself show up at the hangar to fly with one of the airplans… and by luck it has happen. It was a quiet special situation for Steve and Filip to see the man, who support them for so many years… not just with money, but also with whole power of Red Bull.

Next day it was the birthday of Luke, which get celebrated with a traditional Austrian Sacher Torte and for sure loads of beer.

On Friday we have been back on “race mode” and we all have been pretty focused on the competition. Even it was no world cup there have been a lot of really good rides such as Justin Leov or Nick Beer who leads in the overall of the IXS cup.

Saturday starts with the DH qualifications and finishes the 4X race where Filip became 3rd right.
After the qualification all riders have been qualified in really good positions except Brook who had a mechanical in his qualifying run. His early start in the race run bestows Brook a really long time in the hot seat, which means about 140 riders. Brook just got beaten by 4 other riders including his team-mate Steve Smith who become 2nd with 0.233 seconds off Justin Leov.

In the end we had 5 riders in the top 15 and Lewis is 2nd in the overall of the European IXS cup series.

1.Justin Leov, Trek
2.Steve Smith, MS EVIL RACING
3.Nick Beer, Scott 11
4.Marcus Klausmann, Ghost
5.Brook MacDonald, MS EVIL RACING
7.Luke Strobel, MS EVIL RACING
11. Lewis Buchanan, MS EVIL RACING
15. Filip Polc, MS EVIL RACING

Complete results.

Thanks to Hoshi for those impressions.