Well, what a week it’s been in Fort William, the biggest race of the season and the biggest mtb event ever held in the UK. The week started with bright sunshine but the days got progressively cloudier and wetter as the finals got nearer. With competition in XC, Trails, 4x and Downhill the days where going to be packed.

The Downhill track is well known for breaking both parts and riders, and as always was long technical and flat out fast, each run is a matter of physical endurance as well as bike skill with rocks, roots and ruts all looking to knock you off line, this and the sheer length of the course make it one of the hardest in the world. Taking a walk around the race site and the main pit area it was filled with stands from the all the top brands as well as all the national teams. Who’d have thought Israel had a Downhill team?

In between visits to the race site we also had time to play golf one day (the highlight being when Matt sent his club flying onto an island in the middle of the huge river near the golf course) a visit to the Wolftrax trail network at Llaggan (well worth a visit), and extreme hop challenge at the 4x on Friday evening (did anyone make the hop over the stream unscathed) Brian Lopes and Jill Kintner took top honors in the 4x.

Andy did a fantastic job of keeping Joe’s bike running sweet all week under sometimes less than ideal circumstances. Joe looked flat out in practice and qualified well on Thursday coming in for 13^th, skin suits where the order of the day as the strong headwinds on the open top section of the course would have lost any more conventionally dressed riders a good few seconds.

Come Sunday’s finals Joe put in the ride of his life; it was incredible hearing the 40,000 strong crowd roar, as he flew over the Nissan jump and into the finish straight. A well deserved 8^th place against stiff competition from the best junior riders in the World. Well Done Joe.

We now have a Scottish Junior World Champ; Rory Cunningham put in an amazing ride to bag himself the Gold. Racing in the Senior Mens category was intense. Sam Hill took the win with a storming run. Special mention goes to Fabien Barel second by only points of a second, an awesome ride in dreadful conditions, truly nail biting stuff to watch. He came in so close. Greg Minaar fourth, with a dislocated and broken shoulder again an incredible achievement.

One thing we learned this week is that British Cycling team issue track suits are truly chavtastic so much so that on Sunday I brought Joe a gold chain with dollar-sign to complete the look. Sorry Joe but it had to be done! The team are on the road again to the next Worldcup in Maribor in Slovenia, watch this space for more news.